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WHERE THE STRANGE TRAILS 
GO DOWN 




A real wild man of Borneo 
A Dyak head-hunter using the sumpitan, or blow-gun, in the jungle of Central Borneo 



WHERE 

THE STRANGE TRAILS 

GO DOWN 

SULU, BORNEO, CELEBES, BALI, JAVA, 

SUMATRA, STRAITS SETTLEMENTS, 

MALAY STATES, SIAM, CAMBODIA, 

ANNAM, COCHIN-CHINA 



' BY 

E. ALEXANDER POWELL 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAP 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
1921 






Copyright, 1921, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS ^ 

Published October, 1921 



NOV -7 WJ 



S)CLA627624 - 

/ 



PRINTED AT 

THE SCRIBNEE PRESS 

NEW YORK, U. S. A. 



'H^ i. 2^ ' 



To 

THE WINSOME WmOW 

MARGARET CAMPBELL McCUTCHEN 

WHO, DESPITE COUNTLESS DISCOMFORTS, 

ALWAYS KEPT SMILING 



FOREWORD 

It is a curious thing, when you stop to think about 
it, that, though of late the public has been deluged 
with books on the South Seas, though the shelves of 
the public libraries sag beneath the volumes devoted 
to China, Japan, Korea, next to nothing has been writ- 
ten, save by a handful of scientifically-minded explor- 
ers, about those far-flung, gorgeous lands, stretching 
from the southern marches of China to the edges of 
Polynesia, which the ethnologists call Malaysia. Siam, 
Cambodia, Annam, Cochin-China, the Malay States, 
the Straits Settlements, Sumatra, Java, Bali, Celebes, 
Borneo, Sulu . . . their very names are synonymous 
with romance; the sound of them makes restless the 
feet of all who love adventure. Sultans and rajahs 
. . . pirates and head-hunters . . . sun-bronzed pio- 
neers and white-helmeted legionnaires . . . blow-guns 
with poisoned darts and curly-bladed krises . . . ele- 
phants with gilded howdahs . . . tigers, crocodiles, 
orang-utans . . . pagodas and palaces . . . shaven- 
headed priests in yellow robes . . . flaming fire-trees 
... the fragrance of frangipani . . . green jungle 
and steaming tropic rivers . . . white moonlight on 
the long white beaches ... the throb of war-drums 
and the tinkle of wind-blown temple-bells. . . . 

But it is not for all of us to go down the strange 

vii 



vlii FOREWORD 

trails which lead to these magic places. The world's 
work must be done. So, for those who are condemned 
by circumstance to the prosaic existence of the office, 
the factory, and the home, I have written this book. 
I would have them feel the hot breath of the South. 
I would convey to them something of the spell of the 
tropics, the mystery of the jungle, the lure of the 
little, palm-fringed islands which rise from peacock- 
colored seas. I would introduce to them those pictur- 
esque and hardy figures — planters, constabulary of- 
ficers, consuls, missionaries, colonial administrators— 
who are carrying civilization into these dark and dis- 
tant corners of the earth. I would have them know 
the fascination of leaning through those "magic case- 
ments, opening on the foam of perilous seas, in faery 
lands forlorn." 

I had planned, therefore, that this should be a light- 
hearted, care-free, casual narrative. And so, in parts, 
it is. But more serious things have crept, almost im- 
perceptibly, into its pages. The achievements of the 
Dutch empire-builders in the Insulinde, the conditions 
which prevail under the rule of the chartered company 
in Borneo, the opening-up of Indo-China and the Malay 
Peninsula, the regeneration of Siam, the epic strug- 
gle between civilization and savagery which is in 
progress in all these lands — these are phases of Malay- 
sian life which, if this book is to have any serious 
value, I cannot ignore. That is why it is a melange 
of the frivolous and the serious, the picturesque and 
the prosaic, the superficial and the significant. If, 



FOREWORD ix 

when you lay it down, you have gained a better under- 
standing of the dangers and difficulties which beset the 
colonizing white man in the lands of the Malay, if you 
realize that life in the eastern tropics consists of some- 
thing more than sapphire seas and bamboo huts be- 
neath the slanting palm trees and native maidens with 
hibiscus blossoms in their dusky hair, if, in short, you 
have been instructed as well as entertained, then I shall 
feel that I have been justified in writing this book. 

E. Alexander Powell. 
York Harbor, Maine, 

October first, 1921. 



AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

For the courtesies they showed me, and the assist- 
ance they afforded me during the long journey which 
is chronicled in this book, I am deeply indebted to 
many persons in many lands. I welcome this oppor- 
tunity of expressing my gratitude to the Hon. Francis 
Burton Harrison, former Governor-General of the 
Philippine Islands, and to the Hon. Manuel Quezon, 
President of the Philippine Senate, for placing at my 
disposal the coastguard cutter Negros, on which I 
cruised upward of six thousand miles, as well as for 
countless other courtesies. Brigadier-General Ralph W. 
Jones, Warren H. Latimer, Esq., and Major Edwin 
C. Bopp shamefully neglected their personal affairs 
in order to make my journey comfortable and inter- 
esting. Dr. Edward C. Ernst, of the United States 
Quarantine Service at Manila, who served as volun- 
teer surgeon of the expedition; John L. Hawkinson, 
Esq., the man behind the camera; James Rockwell, 
Esq., and Captain A. B. Galvez, commander of the 
Negros, by their unfailing tactfulness and good 
nature, did much to add to the success of the enter- 
prise. I am likewise under the deepest obligations to 
Colonel Ole Waloe, commanding the Philippine 



xii AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

Constabulary in Zamboanga; to the Hon. P. W. 
Rogers, Governor of Jolo ; to Captain R. C. d'Oyley- 
John, formerly Chief Police Officer of Sandakan, 
British North Borneo; to M. de Haan, Resident 
at Samarinda, Dutch Borneo; and to his colleagues 
at Makassar, Singaradja, Kloeng-Kloeng, Surabaya, 
Djokjakarta, and Surakarta; to the Hon. John F. 
Jewell, American Consul-General at Batavia; to the 
Hon. Edwin N. Gunsaulus, American Consul-General 
at Singapore; to J. D. C. Rodgers, Esq., American 
Charge d' Affaires at Bangkok; to his late Royal High- 
ness the Crown Prince of Siam ; to his Serene Highness 
Prince Traidos Prabandh, Siamese Under Secretary 
of State for Foreign Affairs; to his Serene Highness 
Colonel Prince Amoradhat, Chief of Intelligence of the 
Siamese Army, who constituted himself my guide and 
cicerone during our stay in his country; to the French 
Resident-Superior at Pnom-Penh; and to the other 
French officials who aided me during my travels in Indo- 
China. His Excellency J. J. Jusserand, French Am- 
bassador at Washington and his Excellency Phya 
Prabha Karavongse, Siamese Minister at Washington, 
provided me with letters which obtained for me many 
facilities in French Indo-China and in Siam. Nor am 
I unappreciative of the many kindnesses shown me by 
James R. Bray, Esq., of New York City; by Austin 
Day Brixey, Esq., of Greenwich, Conn.; and by Dr. 
Eldon R. James, General Adviser to the Siamese Gov- 
ernment. I also wish to acknowledge my indebted- 



AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT xiii 

ness to A. Cabaton, Esq., from whose extremely valu- 
able study of Netherlands India I have drawn freely in 
describing the Dutch system of administration in the 
Insulinde. I have also obtained much valuable data 
from "Java and Her Neighbors'* by A. C. Walcott, 
Esq., and from *'The Kingdom of the Yellow Robe*' 
by Ernest Young, Esq. 

E. Alexander Powell. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Magic Isles and Fairy Seas i 

II. Outposts of Empire 25 

III. "Where There Ain't No Ten Command- 

ments 50 

IV. The Emeralds of Wilhelmina .... 74 
V. Man-Eaters and Head-Hunters . . . . 99 

VI. In Bugi Land 126 

VII. Down to an Island Eden 143 

VIII. The Garden That Is Java 163 

IX. Prospect Rulers and Comic Opera Courts 189 

X. Through the Golden Chersonese to Ele- 
phant Land 208 

XI. To Pnom-Penh by the Jungle Trail . . 246 

XII. Exiles of the Outlands 270 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

A real wild man of Borneo Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

Hawkinson taking motion-pictures while descending the 

rapids of the Pagsanjan River in Luzon .... lo 

Members of Major Powell's party landing on the south 

coast of Bali lO 

The bull-fight at Parang 22 

Dusun women 6o 

Dyak head-hunters of North Borneo 6o 

The Jalan Tiga, Sandakan 70 

A patron of a Sandakan opium farm 70 

Catching a man-eating crocodile in a Borneo river . . 112 

Major Powell talking to the Regent of Koetei on the 

steps at Tenggaroeng 124 

State procession in the Kraton of the Sultan of Djok- 
jakarta 124 

Some strange subjects of Queen Wilhelmina . . . 130 

The volcano of Bromo, Eastern Java, in eruption . . 170 

A Dyak girl at Tenggaroeng, Dutch Borneo . . . 20O 

A Dyak head-hunter, Dutch Borneo 200 

The captain of the body-guard of "The Spike of the 

Universe" 200 

A clown in the royal wedding procession at Djokjakarta 200 

An elephant hunt in Siam » . . 228 

xvii 



xviii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING FAGB 

King Sisowath of Cambodia 234 

Rama VI, King of Siam 234 

Colorful ceremonies of Old Siam 238 

Transportation in the Siamese jungle 248 

The head of the pageant approaching the camera in 

the palace at Pnom-Penh 266 

Dancing girls belonging to the royal ballet of the King 

of Cambodia 268 

MAP 

Malaysia 28 



WHERE THE STRANGE TRAILS 
GO DOWN 



WHERE THE STRANGE 
TRAILS GO DOWN 

CHAPTER I 

MAGIC ISLES AND FAIRY SEAS 

When I was a small boy I spent my summers at 
the quaint old fishing-village of Mattapoisett, on Buz- 
zard's Bay. Next door to the house we occupied 
stood a low-roofed, unpretentious dwelling, white as 
an old-time clipper ship, with bright green blinds. I 
can still catch the fragrance of the lilacs by the gate. 
The fine old doorway, brass-knockered, arched by a 
spray of crimson rambler, was flanked on one hand 
by a great conch-shell, on the other by an enormous 
specimen of branch-coral, thus subtly intimating to 
passers-by that the owner of the house had been in 
"foreign parts." A distinctly nautical atmosphere 
was lent to the broad, deck-like verandah by a ship's 
barometer, a chart of Cape Cod, and a highly polished 
brass telescope mounted on a tripod so as to com- 
mand the entire expanse of the bay. Here Cap'n 
Bryant, a retired New Bedford whaling captain, was 
wont to spend the sunny days in his big cane-seated 
rocking-chair, puffing meditatively at his pipe and for 
my boyish edification spinning yarns of adventure in 



2 STRANGE TRAILS 

far-distant seas and on islands with magic names — 
Tawi Tawi, Makassar Straits, the Dingdings, the 
Little Paternosters, the Gulf of Boni, Thursday 
Island, Java Head. Of cannibal feasts in New 
Guinea, of head-hunters in Borneo, of strange dances 
by dusky temple-girls in Bali, of up-country expedi- 
tions with the White Rajah of Sarawak, of desperate 
encounters with Dyak pirates in the Sulu Sea, he dis- 
coursed at length and in fascinating detail, while I, 
sprawled on the verandah steps, my knees clasped in 
my hands, listened raptly and, when the veteran's flow 
of reminiscence showed signs of slackening, clamored 
insistently for more. 

Then and there I determined that some day I would 
myself sail those adventurous seas in a vessel of my 
own, that I would poke the nose of my craft up steam- 
ing tropic rivers, that I would drop anchor off towns 
whose names could not be found on ordinary maps, 
and that I would go ashore in white linen and pipe- 
clayed shoes and a sun-hat to take tiffin with sultans 
and rajahs, and to barter beads and brass wire for 
curios — a curly-bladed Malay kris, carved cocoanuts, 
a shark's-tooth necklace, a blow-gun with its poisoned 
darts, a stuffed bird of paradise, and, of course, a 
huge conch-shell and an enormous piece of branch- 
coral — which I would bring home and display to ad- 
miring relatives and friends as convincing proofs of 
where I had been. 

But school and college had to be gotten through 
with, and after them came wars in various parts of 



MAGIC ISLES AND FAIRY SEAS 3 

the world and adventurings in many lands, so that 
thirty years slipped by before an opportunity pre- 
sented itself to realize the dream of my boyhood. 
But when at last I set sail for those far-distant seas 
it was on an enterprise which would have gladdened 
the old sailor's soul — an expedition whose object it 
was to seek out the unusual, the curious, and the pic- 
turesque, and to capture them on the ten miles of 
celluloid film which we took with us, so that those who 
are condemned by circumstance to the humdrum life 
of the farm, the office, or the mill might themselves go 
adventuring o'nights, from the safety and comfort of 
red-plush seats, through the magic of the motion- 
picture screen. When I set out on my long journey 
the old whaling captain whose tales had kindled my 
youthful imagination had been sleeping for a quarter 
of a century in the Mattapoisett graveyard, but when 
our anchor rumbled down off Tawi Tawi, when, steam- 
ing across Makassar Straits, we picked up the Little 
Paternosters, when our tiny vessel poked her bowsprit 
up the steaming Koetei into the heart of the Borneo 
jungle, I knew that, though invisible to human eyes, 
he was standing beside me on the bridge. , 

Until I met the young-old man to whom those maga- 
zines which devote themselves to the gossip of the film 
world admiringly refer as "the Napoleon of the 
movies," it had never occurred to me that adventure 
has a definite market value. At least I had never 
realized that there are people who stand ready to buy 



4 STRANGE TRAILS 

it by the foot, as one buys real estate or rope. I had 
always supposed that the only way adventure could be 
capitalized was as material for magazine articles and 
books and for dinner-table stories. 

"What we are after" the film magnate began ab- 
ruptly, motioning me to a capacious leather chair and 
pushing a box of cigars within my reach, "is some- 
thing new in travel pictures. Like most of the big 
producers, we furnish our exhibitors with complete 
programmes — a feature, a comedy, a topical review, 
and a travel or educational picture. We make the 
features and the comedies in our own studios; the 
weeklies we buy from companies which specialize in 
that sort of thing. But heretofore we have had to 
pick up our travel stuff where we could get it — from 
free lances mostly — and there is never enough really 
good travel material to meet the demand. For quite 
ordinary travel or educational films we have to pay a 
minimum of two dollars b. foot, while really unusual 
pictures will bring almost any price that is asked for 
them. The supply is so uncertain, however, and the 
price is so high that we have decided to try the experi- 
ment of taking our own. That is what I wanted to 
talk to you about." 

"Before the war," he continued, "there was almost 
no demand in the United States for travel pictures. In 
fact, when a manager wanted to clear his house for 
the next show, he would put a travel picture on the 
screen. But since the boys have been coming back 
from France and Germany and Siberia and Russia the 



MAGIC ISLES AND FAIRY SEAS 5 

public has begun to call for travel films again. They've 
heard their sons and brothers and sweethearts tell 
about the strange places they've been, and the strange 
things they've seen, and I suppose it makes them want 
to learn more about those parts of the world that lie 
east of Battery Place and west of the Golden Gate. 
But we don't want the old bromide stuff, mind you — 
mountain-climbing in Switzerland, cutting sugar-cane 
in Cuba, picking cocoanuts in Ceylon. That sort of 
thing goes well enough on the Chautauqua circuits, 
but it's as dead as the corner saloon so far as the big 
cities are concerned. What we are looking for are 
unusual pictures — tigers, elephants, pirates, brigands, 
cannibals. Oriental temples and palaces, war-dances, 
weird ceremonies, curious customs, natives with rings 
in their noses and feathers in their hair, scenes that 
are spectacular and exciting — in short, what the maga- 
zine editors call 'adventure stuff.' We want pic- 
tures that will make 'em sit up in their seats and ex- 
claim, 'Well, what d'ye know about that?' and that 
will send them away to tell their friends about them.'' 

"Like the publisher," I suggested, "who remarked 
that his idea of a good newspaper was one that would 
cause its readers to exclaim when they opened it, 'My 
Godl'?" 

"That's the idea," he agreed. "And if the pictures 
are from places that most people have never heard of 
before, so much the better. I'm told that you've spent 
your life looking for queer places to write about. So 
why can't you suggest some to take pictures of?" 



6 STRANGE TRAILS 

"But I've had no practical experience In taking 
motion-pictures," I protested. "The only time I ever 
touched a motion-picture camera was when I turned 
the crank of Donald Thompson's for a few minutes 
during the entry of the Germans' into Antwerp in 

1914." 

"Were the pictures a success?" the Napoleon of 
the Movies queried interestedly. "I don't recall hav- 
ing seen them." 

"No, you wouldn't," I hastened to explain. "You 
see, it wasn't until the show was all over that Thomp- 
son discovered that he had forgotten to take the cap 
off the lens." 

"Don't let that worry you," he assured me. "We'll 
take care of the technical end. We'll provide you with 
the best camera man to be had and the best equip- 
ment. All you will have to do is to show him what to 
photograph, arrange the action, decide on the settings, 
obtain the permission of the authorities, the good-will 
of the officials, the co-operation of the military, engage 
interpreters and guides, reserve hotel accommodations, 
arrange for motor-cars and boats and horses and spe- 
cial trains, and keep everyone jollied up and feeling 
good generally. Aside from that, there won't be any- 
thing for you to do except to enjoy yourself." 

"It certainly sounds alluring," I admitted. "The 
trouble is that you are looking for something that 
can't always be found. You don't find adventure 
the way you find four-leaf clovers; it just happens to 
you, like the measles or a blow-out. Still, if one has 



MAGIC ISLES AND FAIRY SEAS 7 

the time and money to go after them, there are a lot 
of curious things that might pass for adventure when 
they are shown on the screen." 

"Where are they?" the film magnate asked eagerly, 
spreading upon his mahogany desk a map of the world. 

It was a little disconcerting, this request to point 
out those regions where adventure could be found, 
very much as a visitor from the provinces might ask 
a New York hotel clerk to tell him where he could 
see the Bohemian life of which he had read in the 
Sunday supplements. 

"There's Russian Central Asia, of course," I sug- 
gested tentatively. "Samarkand and Bokhara and 
Tashkent, you know. But I'm afraid they're out of 
the question on account of the Bolsheviki. Besides, 
I'm not looking for the sort of adventure that ends 
between a stone wall and a firing-party. Then there 
are some queer emirates along the southern edge of 
the Sahara : Sokoto and Kanem and Bornu and Wadai. 
But it would take at least six months to obtain the 
necessary permission from the French and British 
colonial offices and to arrange the other details of the 
expedition." 

"But that doesn't exhaust the possibilities by any 
means," I continued hastily, for nothing was farther 
from my wish than to discourage so fascinating a plan. 
"There ought to be some splendid picture material 
among the Dyaks of Borneo — they're head-hunters, 
you know. From there we could jump across to the 
Celebes and possibly to New Guinea. And I under- 



8 STRANGE TRAILS 

stand that they have some queer customs on the island 
of Bali, over beyond Java ; in fact, Tve been told that, 
in spite of all the efforts of the Dutch to stop it, the 
Balinese still practise suttee. A picture of a widow 
being burned on her husband's funeral pyre would be 
a bit out of the ordinary, wouldn't it? That reminds 
me that I read somewhere the other day that next 
spring there is to be a big royal wedding in Djokja- 
karta, in middle Java, with all sorts of gorgeous fes- 
tivities. At Batavia we would have no difficulty in 
getting a steamer for Singapore, and from there we 
could go overland by the new Federated Malay States 
Railway, through Johore and Malacca and Kuala 
Lumpur, to Siam, where the cats and the twins and the 
white elephants come from. From Bangkok we might 
take a short-cut through the Cambodian jungle, by 
elephant, to Pnom-Penh and " 

"Hold on!" the Movie King protested. "That's 
plenty. Let me come up for air. Those names 
you've been reeling off mean as much to me as 
the dishes on the menu of a Chinese restaurant. But 
that's what we're after. We want the people who see 
the pictures to say: 'Where the dickens is that place? 
I never heard of it before.' They get to arguing 
about it, and when they get home they look it up in 
the family atlas, and when they find how far away it 
is, they feel that they've had their money's worth. 
How soon can you be ready to start?" 

"How soon," I countered, "can you have a letter of 
credit ready?" 



MAGIC ISLES AND FAIRY SEAS 9 

Owing to the urgent requirements of the European 
governments, vessels of every description were, as I 
discovered upon our arrival at Manila, few and far 
between in Eastern seas; so, in spite of the assurance 
that I was not to permit the question of expense to 
curtail my itinerary, it is perfectly certain that we could 
not have visited the remote and inaccessible places 
which we did had it not been for the lively interest 
taken in our enterprise by the Honorable Francis Bur- 
ton Harrison, Governor-General of the Philippines, 
and by the Honorable Manuel Quezon, President of 
the Philippine Senate. When Governor-General Har- 
rison learned that I wished to take pictures in the Sulu 
Archipelago, he kindly offered, in order to facilitate 
our movements from island to island, to place at my 
disposal a coast-guard cutter, just as a friend might 
offer one the use of his motor-car. There was at first 
some question as to whether the Governor-General 
had the authority to send a government vessel outside 
of territorial waters, but Mr. Quezon, who, so far as 
influence goes, is a Henry Cabot Lodge and a Boies 
Penrose combined, unearthed a law which permitted 
him to utilize the vessels of the coast-guard service for 
the purpose of entertaining visitors to the islands in 
such ways as the Government of the Philippines saw 
fit. And, in a manner of speaking, Mr. Quezon is the 
Government of the Philippines. Thus it came about 
that on the last day of February, 1920, the coast-guard 
cutter Negros, 150 tons and 150 feet over all — with a 
crew of sixty men, Captain A. B. Galvez commanding. 



lo STRANGE TRAILS 

and having on board the Lovely Lady, who accom- 
panies me on all my travels; the Winsome Widow, 
who joined us in Seattle ; the Doctor, who is an officer 
of the- United States Health Service stationed at Ma- 
nila; John L. Hawkinson, the efficient and imper- 
turbable man behind the camera ; three friends of the 
Governor-General, who went along for the ride; and 
myself — steamed out of Manila Bay into the crimson 
glory of a tropic sunset, and, when past Cavite and 
Corregidor, laid her course due south toward those 
magic isles and fairy seas which are so full of mystery 
and romance, so packed with possibilities of high ad- 
venture. 



Governor-General Harrison believed, by methods 
that are legitimate, in adding to the American public's 
knowledge of the Philippines, and it was owing to his 
broad-minded point of view and to the many cable- 
grams which he sent ahead of us, that at each port in 
the islands at which we touched we found the local 
officials waiting on the pier-head to bid us welcome 
and to assist us. At Jolo, which is the capital of the 
Moro country, two lean, sun-tanned, youthful-looking 
men came aboard to greet us : one was the Honorable 
P. W. Rogers, Governor of the Department of Sulu; 
the other was Captain Link, a former officer of con- 
stabulary who is now the Provincial Treasurer. In 
the first five minutes of our conversation I discovered 
that they knew exactly the sort of picture material that 



MAGIC ISLES AND FAIRY SEAS ii 

I wanted and that they would help me to the limit of 
their ability to get it. For that matter, they themselves 
personify adventure in its most exciting form. 

Rogers, who was originally a soldier, went to the 
Philippines as orderly for General Pershing long be- 
fore the days when "Black Jack" was to win undying 
fame on battlefields half the world away. The young 
soldier showed such marked ability that, thanks to 
Pershing's assistance, he obtained a post as stenog- 
rapher under the civil government, thence rising by 
rapid steps to the difficult post of Governor of Sulu. 
A better selection could hardly have been made, for 
there is no white man in the islands whom the Moros 
more heartily respect and fear than their boyish-look- 
ing governor. Mrs. Rogers is the daughter of a 
German trader who lived in Jolo and died there with 
his boots on. A year or so prior to her marriage she 
was sitting with her parents at tiffin when a Moro, 
with whom her father had had a trifling business dis- 
agreement, knocked at the door and asked for a 
moment's conversation. Telling the native that he 
would talk with him after he had finished his meal, 
the trader returned to the table. Scarcely had he 
seated himself when the Moro, who had slipped unob- 
served into the dining room, sprang like a panther, his 
broad-bladed harong describing a glistening arc, and 
the trader's head rolled among the dishes. Another 
sweep of the terrible weapon and the mother's hand 
was severed at the wrist, while the future Mrs. Rogers 
owes her life to the fact that she fainted and slipped 



12 STRANGE TRAILS 

under the table. I relate this incident in order to give 
you some idea of the local atmosphere. 

A few weeks before our arrival at Jolo, Governor 
Rogers, In compliance with instructions from Manila, 
had ordered a census of the inhabitants. But the 
Moros are a highly suspicious folk, so, when some one 
started the rumor that the government was planning 
to brand them, as It brands Its mules and horses, it 
promptly gained wide credence. By tactful explana- 
tions the suspicions of most of the natives were al- 
layed, but one Moro, notorious as a bad man, barri- 
caded himself, together with five of his friends, three 
women and a boy, in his house — a nipa hut raised 
above the ground on stilts — and defied the Governor 
to enumerate them. Now, if the Governor had per- 
mitted such open defiance to pass unnoticed, the entire 
population of Jolo, always ready for trouble, promptly 
would have gotten out of hand. So, accompanied by 
five troopers of the constabulary, he rode out to the 
outlaw's house and attempted to reason with him. The 
man obstinately refused to show himself, however, 
even turning a deaf ear to the appeals of the village 
imam. Thereupon Rogers ordered the constabulary 
to open fire, their shots being answered by a fusillade 
from the Moros barricaded In the house. In twenty 
minutes the flimsy structure looked more like a sieve 
than a dwelling. When the firing ceased a six-year-old 
boy descended the ladder and, approaching the Gov- 
ernor, remarked unconcernedly: "You can go in now. 
They're all dead." Then Rogers called up the cen- 



MAGIC ISLES AND FAIRY SEAS 13 

sus-taker and told him to go ahead with his enumera- 
tion. 

The provincial treasurer, Captain Link, is a lean, 
lithe South Carolinian who has spent fifteen years in 
Moroland. He is what is known in the cattle country 
as a "go-gitter." It is told of him that he once nearly 
lost his commission, while in the constabulary, by 
sending to the Governor, as a Christmas present, a 
package which, upon being opened, was found to con- 
tain the head of a much-wanted outlaw. 

"I knew he wanted that fellow's head more than 
anything else in the world," Captain Link said naively, 
in telling me the story, "so it struck me it would be 
just the thing to send him for a Christmas present. I 
spent a lot of time and trouble getting it too, for the 
fellow sure was a bad hombre. It would have gotten 
by all right, but the Governor's wife, thinking it was 
a present for herself, had to go and open the package. 
She went into hysterics when she saw what was inside 
and the Governor was so mad he nearly fired me. 
Some people have no sense of humor." 

Atop of the bookcase in Captain Link's study — the 
bookcase, by the way, contains Burton's Thousand and 
One Nights, the Discourses of Epictetus, and Presi- 
dent Eliot's tabloid classics — is the skull in question, 
surmounted by a Moro fez. Across the front of the 
fez is printed this significant legend: 

THIS IS JOHN HENRY 
JOHN HENRY DISOBEYED CAPTAIN LINK 

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi 



14 STRANGE TRAILS 

While we are on the subject, let me tell you about 
another of these advance-guards of civilization who, 
single-handed, transformed a worthless island in the 
Sulu Sea into a veritable Garden of the Lord and Its 
Inhabitants from warlike savages into peaceful and 
prosperous farmers. In 19 14 a short, bespectacled 
Michigander named Warner was sent by the Philippine 
Bureau of Education to Siassi, one of the Islands of 
the Sulu group, to teach its Moro inhabitants the rudi- 
ments of American civilization. Warner's sole equip- 
ment for the job consisted, as he candidly admitted, of 
a medical education. He took with him a number of 
Filipino assistants, but as they did not get along with 
the Moros, he shipped them back to Manila and sent 
for an Airedale dog. He also sent for all the works 
on agriculture and gardening that were to be had In 
the bookshops of the capital. For five years he re- 
mained on Siassi, the only white man. As even the lit- 
tle Inter-Island steamers rarely find their way there, 
months sometimes passed without his hearing from the 
outside world. But he was too busy to be lonely. His 
jurisdiction extended over two Islands, separated by a 
narrow channel, but this he never crossed at night and 
In the daytime only when he was compelled to, as the 
narrow channel was the home of giant crocodiles which 
not infrequently attacked and capsized the frail 
native vintas, killing their occupants as they struggled 
in the water. 

Warner, who had spent four years among the 
Visayans before going to Siassi, and who was, there- 



MAGIC ISLES AND FAIRY SEAS 15 

fore, eminently qualified to compare the northern 
islanders with the Moros, told me that the latter 
possess a much higher type of intelligence than the 
Filipinos and assimilate new ideas far more quickly. 
He added that they have a highly developed sense of 
humor ; that they are quick to appreciate subtle stories, 
which the Tagalogs and Visayans are not; and that 
they are much more ready to accept advice on agricul- 
tural and economic matters than the Christian Fili- 
pinos, who have a life-sized opinion of their own abil- 
ity. When the day's work was over, he said, he would 
seat himself in the doorway of his hut, surrounded 
by a group of Moros, and discuss crops and weather 
prospects, swap jokes and tell stories, just as he might 
have done with lighter skinned sons of toil around the 
cracker-barrel of a cross-roads store in New England. 
He added that he was sadly in need of some new 
stories to tell his Moro proteges, as, after six years 
on the island, his own fund was about exhausted. But 
he was growing weary of life on Siassi, he told me; 
he wanted action and excitement; so he was preparing 
to move, with his Airedale, to Bohol, in the Visayas, 
where, he had heard it rumored, there was another 
white man. 

Still another of the picturesque characters with 
whom I foregathered nightly on the after-deck of the 
Negros during our stay at Jolo was a former soldier, 
John Jennings by name. He was an operative of the 
Philippine Secret Service, being engaged at the time 
in breaking up the running of opium from Borneo 



1 6 STRANGE TRAILS 

across the Sulu Sea to the Moro islands. Jennings is 
a short, thickset, powerfully-built man, all nerve and 
no nerves. Adventure is his middle name. He has 
lived more stories than I could invent. Shortly before 
our arrival at Jolo Jennings had learned from a native 
in his pay that a son of the Flowery Kingdom, the 
proprietor of a notorious gambling resort situated on 
the quarter-mile-long ramshackle wharf known as the 
Chinese pier, was driving a roaring trade in the for- 
bidden drug. So one afternoon Jennings, his hands in 
his pockets and in each pocket a service automatic, 
sauntered carelessly along the pier and upon reaching 
the reputed opium den, knocked briskly on the door. 
The Chinese proprietor evidently suspected the pur- 
pose of his visit, however, for he was unable to gain 
admittance. So that night, wearing the huge straw 
sun-hat and flapping garments of blue cotton of a 
coolie, he tried again. This time in response to his 
knock the heavy door swung open. Within all T^as 
black and silent as the tomb. The lintel was low 
and Jennings was compelled to stoop in order to enter. 
As he cautiously set foot across the threshold there 
was a sudden swish of steel in the darkness and the 
blade of a barong whistled past his face, slicing off 
the front of his hat and missing his head by the width 
of an eyelash. As he sprang back the door slammed 
in his face and he heard the bolts shot home, fol- 
lowed by the sound of a weapon clattering on the 
floor and the patter of naked feet. Realizing that the 
men he was after were making their escape by another 



MAGIC ISLES AND FAIRY SEAS 17 

exit, Jennings hurled himself against the door, an auto- 
matic In either hand. It gave way before his as- 
sault and he was precipitated headlong Into the inky 
blackness of the room. Taking no chances this time, 
he raked It with a stream of lead from end to end. 
Then, there being no further sound, he swept the 
place with a beam from his electric torch. Stretched 
on the floor were three dead Chinamen and beside 
them was enough opium to have drugged everyone 
on the Island. That little episode, as Jennings re- 
marked dryly, put quite a crimp in the opium traffic 
in Jolo. 



Cockfighting, which is as popular throughout the 
Philippines as baseball Is In the United States, finds its 
most enthusiastic devotees among the Moros, every 
community In the Sulu Islands having Its cockpit and its 
fighting birds, on whose prowess the natives gamble 
with reckless abandon. Gambling is, indeed, the 
raison d^etre of cockfighting In Moroland, for, as the 
birds are armed with four-inch spurs of razor sharp- 
ness, and as one or both birds are usually killed within 
a few minutes after they are tossed into the pit, very 
little sport attaches to the contest. The villagers are 
inordinately proud of their local fighting-cocks, boast- 
ing of their prowess as a Bostonlan boasts of the 
Braves or a New Yorker of the Giants, and are always 
ready to back them to the limit of their means. 

Some years ago, according to a story that was told 



i8 STRANGE TRAILS 

me In the islands — for the truth of which I do not 
vouch — an American destroyer dropped anchor off 
Cebu, the second largest city in the Philippines. That 
night a shore party of bluejackets, wandering about 
the town in quest of amusement, dropped in at a cock- 
pit where a main was in progress. Noting the large 
wagers laid by the excited natives on their favorite 
birds, the sailors offered to back a "chicken" which 
they had aboard the destroyer against all the cocks in 
Cebu. The natives, smiling in their sleeves at the 
prospect of taking money so easily from the Ameri- 
canos, promptly accepted the challenge and some hun- 
dreds of pesos were laid against the unknown bird. 
At the hour set for the fight the grinning sailors ap- 
peared at the cockpit with their "chicken," the mascot 
of the destroyer — a large American eagle! Ensued, 
of course, a torrent of protest and remonstrance, 
but the money was already up and the bluejackets 
demanded action. So the eagle was anchored by a 
chain in the center of the pit, where it sat motionless 
and apathetic, head on one side, eyelids drooping, 
apparently half asleep — until a cock was tossed into 
the pit. Then there was a lightning-like flash of the 
mighty talons and all that was left of the Cebuan 
champion was a heap of bloodied feathers. The 
"match" was quickly over and the triumphant sailors, 
collecting their bets, departed for their ship. Ever 
since then there has been a proverb in Cebu — "Never 
match your cock against an American chicken." 



MAGIC ISLES AND FAIRY SEAS 19 

Governor Rogers informed me that, In compliance 
with a cablegram from the Governor-General, he had 
arranged a "show" for us at a village called Parang, 
on the other side of the island. The "show," I gath- 
ered, was to consist of a stag-hunt, shark-fishing, war- 
dances, and pony races, and was to conclude with a na- 
tive bull-fight. One of the favorite sports of the 
Moros is hunting the small native stag on horseback, 
tiring it out, and killing it with spears. As it devel- 
oped, however, that there was no certainty of being 
able so to stage-manage the affair that either the hunt- 
ers or the hunted would come within the range of the 
camera, we regretfully decided to dispense with that 
number of the programme. 

When we arrived at Parang it looked as though the 
entire population of the island had assembled for the 
occasion. The native police were keeping clear a 
circle in which the dances were to take place, while the 
slanting trunks of the cocoanut-palms provided re- 
served seats for scores of tan and chocolate and coffee- 
colored youngsters. We were greeted by the Pang- 
lima of Parang, the overlord of the district, who 
explained, through Governor Rogers, that he had had 
prepared a little repast of which he hoped that we 
would deign to partake. Now, after you know some 
of the secrets of Moro cooking and have had a glimpse 
into a Moro kitchen, even the most robust appetite is 
usually dampened. But the Governor whispered "The 
old man has gone to a lot of trouble to arrange this 
show and if you refuse to eat his food he'll be mor- 



20 STRANGE TRAILS 

tally offended," so, purely in the interests of amity, we 
seated ourselves at the table, which had been set under 
the palms in the open. I don't know what we ate and 
I don't care to know — though I admit that I had some 
uneasy suspicions — ^but, with the uncompromising eye 
of the old Panglima fixed sternly upon us, we did our 
best to convince him that we appreciated his cuisine. 
But the dancing which followed made us forget what 
we had eaten. During the ensuing months we were 
to see dances in many lands — in Borneo and Bali and 
Java and Siam and Cambodia — but they were all char- 
acterized by a certain monotony and sameness. These 
Moro dancers, however, were in a class by themselves. 
If they could be brought across the ocean and would 
dance before an audience on Broadway with the same 
savage abandon with which they danced before the 
camera under the palm-trees of Parang, there would 
be a line a block long in front of the box-office. One 
of the dances was symbolical of a cock-fight, the cocks 
being personified by a young woman and a boy. It 
was sheer barbarism, of course, but it was fascinating. 
And the curious thing about it was that the hundreds 
of Moros who stood and squatted in a great circle, 
and who had doubtless seen the same thing scores of 
times before, were so engrossed in the movements of 
the dance, each of which had its subtle shade of mean- 
ing, that they became utterly oblivious to our pres- 
ence or to Hawkinson's steady grinding of the camera. 
In the war-dance the participants, who were Moro 
fighting men, and were armed with spears, shields, and 



MAGIC ISLES AND FAIRY SEAS 21 

the vicious, broad-bladed knives known as harongs, 
gave a highly realistic representation of pinning an 
enemy to the earth with a spear, and with the harong 
decapitating him. The first part of the dance, before 
the passions of the savages became aroused, was, how- 
ever, monotonous and uninteresting. 

"Can't you stir 'em up a little?" called Hawkinson, 
who, like all camera men, demands constant action. 
"Tell 'em that this film costs money and that we didn't 
come here to take pictures of Loie Fuller stuff." 

"I think it might be as well to let them take their 
time about It," remarked Captain Link. "These 
Moros always get very much worked up In their war- 
dances, and occasionally they forget that It Is all make- 
believe and send a spear into a spectator. It's safer 
to leave them alone. They're very temperamental." 

"That would make a corking picture," said Hawkin- 
son enthusiastically, "if I only knew which fellow was 
going to be speared so that I could get the camera 
focussed on him." 

"The only trouble is," I remarked dryly, "that they 
might possibly pick out you" 

In Spanish bull-fights, after the banderillos and 
picadores have tormented the bull until It Is exhausted, 
the matador flaunts a scarlet cloak In front of the 
beast until It is bewildered and then despatches it 
with a sword. In Moroland, however, the bulls, which 
are bred and trained for the purpose, do their best to 
kill each other, thus making the fight a much more 



22 STRANGE TRAILS 

sporting proposition. The bull-fight which was ar- 
ranged for our benefit at Parang was staged in a field 
of about two acres just outside the town, the spectators 
being kept at a safe distance by a troop of Moro 
horsemen under the direction of the old Panglima. 
After Hawkinson had set up his camera on the edge 
of this extemporized arena the bulls were brought in : 
medium-sized but exceptionally powerful beasts, the 
muscles rippling under their sleek brown coats, their 
short horns filed to the sharpness of lance-tips. Each 
animal was led by its owner, who was able to control 
it to a limited degree during the fight by means of a 
cord attached to the ring in its nose. When the 
signal was given for the fight to begin, the bulls ap- 
proached each other cautiously, snorting and pawing 
the ground. They reminded me of two strange dogs 
who cannot decide whether they wish to fight or be 
friends. For ten minutes, regardless of the jeers of 
the spectators and the proddings of their handlers, 
the great brown beasts rubbed heads as amicably as a 
yoke of oxen. Then, just as we had made up our 
minds that it was a fiasco and that there would be no 
bull-fight pictures, there was a sudden angry bellow, 
the two great heads came together with a thud like a 
pile-driver, and the fight was on. The next twenty 
minutes Hawkinson and I spent in alternately setting 
up his camera within range of the panting, straining 
animals and in picking it up and running for our lives, 
in order to avoid being trampled by the maddened 
beasts in their furious and unexpected onslaughts. 



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MAGIC ISLES AND FAIRY SEAS 23 

The men at the ends of the nose-ropes were as help- 
less to control their infuriated charges as a trout fish- 
erman who has hooked a shark. With horns inter- 
locked and with blood and sweat dripping from their 
massive necks and shoulders, they fought each other, 
step by step, across the width of the arena, across 
a cultivated field which lay beyond, burst through 
a thorn hedge surrounding a native's patch of gar- 
den, trampled the garden into mire, and narrowly 
escaped bringing down on top of them the owner's 
dwelling, which, like most Moro houses, was raised 
above the ground on stilts. It looked for a time as 
though the fight would continue over a considerable 
portion of the island, but it was brought to an abrupt 
conclusion when one of the bulls, withdrawing a few 
yards, to gain momentum, charged like a tank attack- 
ing the Hindenburg Line, driving one of its horns 
deep into its adversary's eye-socket, whereupon the 
wounded animal, half-blinded and mad with pain, 
turned precipitately, jerked the nose-rope from its 
owner's grasp, and stampeding the spectators in its 
mad flight, disappeared in the depths of the jungle. 

"That," announced the Governor, "concludes the 
morning performance. This afternoon we will pre- 
sent for your approval a programme consisting of pony 
races, a carabao fight, a shark-fishing expedition, and, 
if time permits, a visit to the pearl-fisheries to see the 
divers at work. This evening we will call on the 
Princess Fatimah, the daughter of the Sultan, and 



24 STRANGE TRAILS 

tomorrow I have arranged to take you to Tapul Island 

to shoot wild carabao. After that " 

"After that," I interrupted, "we go away from 
here. If we stayed on in this quiet little island of 
yours much longer, we shouldn't have any film left for 
the other places." 



CHAPTER II 

OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE 

We sailed at sunset out of Jolo and all through the 
breathless tropic night the Negros forged ahead at 
half-speed, her sharp prow cleaving the still bosom 
of the Sulu Sea as silently as a gondola stealing down 
the Canale Grande. So oppressive was the night that 
sleep was out of the question, and I leaned upon the 
rail of the bridge, the hot land breeze, laden with the 
mysterious odors of the tropics, beating softly in my 
face, and listlessly watched the phosphorescent ostrich 
feathers curling from our bows. Behind me, in the 
darkened chart-room, the Filipino quartermaster 
gently swung the wheel from time to time in response 
to the direction of the needle on the illuminated com- 
pass-dial. So lifeless was the sea that our foremast 
barely swayed against the stars. The smoke from our 
funnel trailed across the purple canopy of the sky as 
though smeared with an inky brush. 

How long I stood there, lost in reverie, I have no 
idea : hours no doubt. I must have fallen into a doze, 
for I was awakened by the brisk, incisive strokes of 
the ship's bell, echoed, a moment later, by eight fainter 
strokes coming from the deck below. Then the soft 
patter of bare feet which meant the changing of the 

25 



26 STRANGE TRAILS 

watch. Though the velvety darkness Into which we 
were steadily ploughing had not perceptibly decreased, 
it was now cut sharply across, from right to left, 
by what looked like a tightly stretched wire of glow- 
ing silver. Even as I looked this slender fissure 
of illumination widened, almost imperceptibly at 
first, then faster, faster, until at one burst came the 
dawn. The sombre hangings of the night were swept 
aside by an invisible hand as are drawn back the cur- 
tains at a window. As you have seen from a hill the 
winking lights of a city disappear at daybreak, so, one 
by one, the stars went out. Masses of angry clouds 
reared themselves in ominous, fantastic forms against 
a sullen sky. The hot land breeze changed to a cold 
wind which made me shiver. Suddenly the mounting 
rampart of clouds, which seemed about to burst in a 
tempest, was pierced by a hundred flaming lances com- 
ing from beyond the horizon's rim. Before their on- 
slaught the threatening cloud-wall crumbled, faded, 
and abruptly dropped away to reveal the sun advanc- 
ing in all that brazen effrontery which it assumes in 
those lawless latitudes along the Line. Now the sky 
was become a huge inverted bowl of flawless azure 
porcelain, the surface of the Sulu Sea sparkled as 
though strewn with a million diamonds, and, not a 
league off our bows, rose the jungle-clothed shores of 
Borneo. 

Scattered along the fringes of the world are certain 
places whose names ring in the ears of youth like 
trumpet-calls. They are passwords to romance and 



OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE 27 

high adventure. Their very mention makes the feet 
of the young men restless. They mark the places 
where the strange trails go down. Of them all, the 
one that most completely captivated my boyish imagi- 
nation was Borneo. To me, as to millions, of other 
youngsters, its name had been made familiar by that 
purveyor of entertainment to American boyhood, 
Phineas T. Barnum, as the reputed home of the wild 
man. In its jungles, through the magic of Marryat's 
breathless pages, I fought the head-hunter and pur- 
sued the boa-constrictor and the orang-utan. It was 
then, a boyhood dream come true when I stood at 
daybreak on the bridge of the Negros and through 
my glasses watched the mysterious island, which I had 
so often pictured in my imagination, rise with tanta- 
lizing slowness from the sapphire sea. 

We forged ahead cautiously, for our charts were 
none too recent or reliable and we lacked the "Malay 
Archipelago" volume of The Sailing Directions — the 
"Sailor's Bible," as the big, orange-covered book, full 
of comforting detail, is known. As the morning mists 
dissolved before the sun I could make out a pale ivory 
beach, and back of the beach a band of green which 
I knew for jungle, and back of that, in turn, a range 
of purple mountains which culminated in a majestic, 
cloud-wreathed peak. An off-shore breeze brought to 
my nostrils the strange, sweet odors of the hot lands. 
A Malay vinta with widespread bamboo outriggers 
and twin sails of orange flitted by — an enormous but- 
terfly skimming the surface of the water. I was 



28 STRANGE TRAILS 

actually within sight of that grim island whose name 
has ever been a synonym for savagery. For never 
think that piracy, head-hunting, poisoned darts shot 
from blow-guns are horrors extinct in Borneo today, 
for they are not. Ask the mariners who sail these 
waters; ask the keepers of the lonely lighthouses, the 
officers who command the constabulary outposts in 
the bush. They know Borneo, and not favorably. 

You will picture Borneo, if you please, as a vast, 
squat island — the third largest in the world, in fact 
— half again as large as France, bordered by a sandy 
littoral, moated by swamps reeking with putrid mias- 
mata and pernicious vapors, covered with dense for- 
ests and impenetrable jungles, ridged by mile-high 
mountain ranges, seamed by mighty rivers, inhabited 
by the most savage beasts and the most bestial savages 
known to man. Lying squarely athwart the Line, the 
sun beats down upon it like the blast from an open 
furnace-door. The story is told in Borneo of a dis- 
solute planter who died from sunstroke. The day 
after the funeral a spirit message reached the widow 
of the dear departed. "Please send down my blan- 
kets" it said. But it is the terrible humidity which 
makes the climate dangerous; a humidity due to the 
innumerable swamps, the source of pestilence and 
fever, and to the incredible rainfall, which averages 
over six and a half feet a year. No wonder that In 
the Indies Borneo is known as "The White Man's 
Graveyard." 

Imbedded in the northern coast of the Island, like 




100 Longitude 



Kast 110 .from 



Greenwich 120 



OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE 29 

a row of semi-precious stones set in a barbaric brooch, 
are the states of British North Borneo, Brunei, and 
Sarawak. Their back-doors open on the wilderness 
of mountain, forest and jungle which marks the north- 
ern boundary of Dutch Borneo; their front windows 
look out upon the Sulu and the China Seas. Of these 
three territories, the first is under the jurisdiction of 
the British North Borneo Company, a private cor- 
poration, which administers it under the terms of a 
royal charter. The second is ruled by the Sultan of 
Brunei, whose once vast dominions have steadily 
dwindled through cession and conquest until they are 
now no larger than Connecticut. On the throne of 
the last sits one of the most romantic and picturesque 
figures in the world. His Highness James Vyner 
Brooke, a descendant of that Sir James Brooke who, 
in the middle years of the last century, made himself 
the "White Rajah" of Sarawak, and who might well 
have been the original of The Man Who Would Be 
King. Though all three governments are permitted 
virtually a free hand so far as their domestic affairs 
are concerned, they are under the protection of Great 
Britain and their foreign affairs are controlled from 
Westminster. The remaining three-quarters of Bor- 
neo, which contains the richest mines, the finest for- 
ests, the largest rivers, and, most important of all, 
the great oil-fields of Balik-Papan, forms one of the 
Outer Possessions, or Outposts, of Holland's East 
Indian Empire. 



30 STRANGE TRAILS 

Long before the yellow ribbon of the coast, with 
its fringe of palms, became visible we could make 
out the towering outline of Kina Balu, the sacred 
mountain, fourteen thousand feet high, which, seen 
from the north, bears a rather striking resemblance in 
its general contour to Gibraltar. The natives regard 
Kina Balu with awe and veneration as the home of 
departed spirits, believing that it exercises a powerful 
influence on their lives. When a man is dying they 
speak of him as ascending Kina Balu and in times of 
drought they formerly practised a curious and hor- 
rible custom, known as sumunguping , which the 
authorities have now suppressed. When the crops 
showed signs of failing the natives decided to despatch 
a messenger direct to the spirits of their relatives and 
friends in the other world entreating them to implore 
relief from the gods who control the rains. The per- 
son chosen to convey the message was usually a slave 
or an enemy captured in battle. Binding their victim 
to a post, the warriors of the tribe advanced, one by 
one, and drove their spears into his body, shouting 
with each thrust the messages which they wished con- 
veyed to the spirits on the mountain. 

With the coming of day we pushed ahead at full 
speed. Soon we could make out the precipitous sand- 
stone cliffs of Balhalla, the island which screens the 
entrance to Sandakan harbor. But long before we 
came abreast of the town signs of human habitation 
became increasingly apparent: little clusters of nipa- 
thatched huts built on stilts over the water; others 



OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE 31 

hidden away in the jungle and betraying themselves 
only by spirals of smoke rising lazily above the 
feathery tops of the palms. Sandakan itself straggles 
up a steep wooded hill, the Chinese and native quar- 
ters at its base wallowing amid a network of foul- 
smelling and incredibly filthy sewers and canals or 
built on rickety wooden platforms which extend for 
half a mile or more along the harbor's edge. A little 
higher up, fronting on a parade ground which looks 
from the distance like a huge green rug spread in the 
sun to air, are the government offices, low structures 
of frame and plaster, designed so as to admit a maxi- 
mum of air and a minimum of heat; the long, low 
building of the Planters Club, encircled by deep, cool 
verandahs; a Chinese joss-house, its fagade enlivened 
by grotesque and brilliantly colored carvings; and a 
down-at-heels hotel. Close by are the churches erected 
and maintained by the Protestant and Roman Catholic 
missions — the former the only stone building in the 
protectorate. At the summit of the hill, reached by a 
steeply winding carriage road, are the bungalows of 
the Europeans, their white walls, smothered in crim- 
son masses of bougainvillsea and shaded by stately 
palms and blazing fire-trees, peeping out from a wil- 
derness of tropic vegetation. Viewed from the har- 
bor, Sandakan is one of the most enchanting places 
that I have ever seen. It looks like a setting on a 
stage and you have the feeling that at any moment 
the curtain may descend and destroy the illusion. It 
is not until you go ashore and wander in the native 



32 STRANGE TRAILS 

quarter, where vice in every form stalks naked and 
unashamed, that you realize that the town is like a 
beautiful harlot, whose loveliness of face and figure 
belie the evil in her heart. Even after I came to 
understand that the place is a sink of iniquity, I never 
ceased to marvel at its beauty. It reminded me of 
the exclamation of a young English girl, the wife of a 
German merchant, as their steamer approached Hong 
Kong and the superb panorama which culminates in 
The Peak slowly unrolled. 

"Look, Otto! Look!" she cried. "You must say 
that it is beautiful even if it is English." 

Of those lands which have not yet submitted to the 
bit and bridle of civilization — and they can be num- 
bered on the fingers of one's two hands — Borneo is the 
most intractable. Of all the regions which the preda- 
tory European has claimed for his own, it is the least 
submissive, the least civilized, the least exploited and 
the least known. Its interior remains as untamed as 
before the first white man set foot on its shores four 
hundred years ago. The exploits of those bold and 
hardy spirits — explorers, soldiers, missionaries, ad- 
ministrators — who have attempted to carry to the 
natives of Borneo the Gospel of the Clean Shirt and 
the Square Deal form one of the epics of coloniza- 
tion. They have died with their boots on from fever, 
plague and snake-bite, from poisoned dart and Dyak 
spear. Though their lives would yield material for a 
hundred books of adventure, their story, which is the 



OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE 33 

story of the white man's war for civilization through- 
out Malaysia, is epitomized in the few lines graven 
on the modest marble monument which stands at the 
edge of Sandakan's sun-scorched parade ground: 



In 

Memory 

of 

Francis Xavier Witti 

Killed near the Sibuco River 

May, 1882 

of 

Frank Hatton 

Accidentally shot at Segamah 

March, 1883 

of 

Dr. D. Manson Fraser 

and 

Jemadhar Asa Singh 

the two latter mortally wounded at Kopang 

May, 1883 

and of 

Alfred Jones, Adjutant 

Shere Singh, Regimental Sergeant-Major 

of the British North Borneo Constabulary 

Killed at Ranau 1897-98 

and of 

George Graham Warder 

District Officer, Tindang Batu 

Murdered at Marak Parak 

28th July 1903 

This Monument Is Erected as a Mark of Respect 

by their Brother Officers 



Though Sandakan is the chief port of British North 
Borneo, with a population of perhaps fifteen thou- 
sand, it has barely a hundred European inhabitants, 
of whom only a dozen are women. Girls marry al- 



34 STRANGE TRAILS 

most as fast as they arrive, and the incoming boats 
are eagerly scanned by the bachelor population, much 
in the same spirit as that in which a ticket-holder scans 
the lists of winning numbers in a lottery, wondering 
when his turn will come to draw something. If the 
bulk of the men are confirmed misogynists and confine 
themselves to the club bar and card-room it is only 
because there are not enough women to go round. 
The sacrifice of the women who, in order to be near 
their husbands, consent to sicken and fade and grow 
old before their time in such a spot, is very great. 
With their children at school in England, they pass 
their lonely lives in palm-thatched bungalows, raised 
high above the ground on piles as a protection against 
insects, snakes and floods, without amusements save 
such as they can provide themselves, and in a climate 
so humid that mushrooms will grow on one's boots in 
a single night during the rains. They are as truly 
empire-builders as the men and, though the parts they 
play are less conspicuous, perhaps, they are as truly 
deserving of honors and rewards. 

There is no servant problem in Borneo. Cooks 
jostle one another to cook for you. They will even 
go to the length of poisoning each other in order to 
step into a lucrative position, with a really big master 
and a memsahib who does not give too much trouble. 
But there are other features of domestic life for which 
the plenitude of servants does not compensate. Be- 
cause existence is made almost unendurable by mos- 
quitoes and other insects, within each sleeping room is 



OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE 35 

constructed a rectangular framework, covered with 
mosquito-netting and just large enough to contain a 
bed, a dressing-table and an arm-chair. In these 
insect-proof cells the Europeans spend all of their 
sleeping and many of their waking hours. So aggres- 
sive are the mosquitoes, particularly during the rains, 
that, when one invites people in for dinner or bridge, 
the servants hand the guests long sacks of netting 
which are drawn over the feet and legs, the top being 
tied about the waist with a draw-string. Were it not 
for these mosquito-bags there would be neither bridge 
nor table conversation. Everyone would be too busy 
scratching. 

The houses, as I have already mentioned, are raised 
above the ground on brick piles or wooden stilts. 
Though this arrangement serves the purpose of keep- 
ing things which creep and crawl out of the house 
itself, the custom of utilizing the open space beneath 
the house as a hen-roost offers a standing invitation to 
the reptiles with which Borneo abounds. While we 
were in Sandakan a python invaded the chicken-house 
beneath the dwelling of the local magistrate one night 
and devoured half a dozen of the judge's imported 
Leghorns. Gorged to repletion, the great reptile fell 
asleep, being discovered by the servants the next morn- 
ing. The magistrate put an end to its predatory career 
with a shot-gun. It measured slightly over twenty 
feet from nose to tail and in circumference was con- 
siderably larger than an inflated fire-hose. Imagine 



36 STRANGE TRAILS 

finding such a thing colled up at the foot of your cellar- 
stairs after you had been indulging in home-brew! 

One evening a party of us were seated on the 
verandah of the Planters Club in Sandakan. The con- 
versation, which had pretty much covered the world, 
eventually turned to snakes. 

"That reminds me," remarked a constabulary of- 
ficer who had spent many years in Malaysia, "of a 
queer thing that happened in a place where I was sta- 
tioned once in the Straits Settlements. It was one of 
those deadly dull places — only a handful of white 
women, no cinema, no race course, nothing. But the 
Devil, you know, always finds mischief for idle hands 
to do. One day a youngster — a subaltern in the bat- 
talion that was stationed there — returned from a 
leave spent in England. He brought back with him 
a young English girl whom he had married while he 
was at home. A slender, willowy thing she was, with 
great masses of coppery-red hair and the loveliest pink- 
and-white complexion. She quickly adapted herself 
to the disagreeable features of life in the tropics — with 
one exception. The exception was that she could never 
overcome her inherent and unreasoning fear of snakes. 
The mere sight of one would send her into hysterics. 

"One afternoon, while she was out at tea with some 
friends, the Malay gardener brought to the house 
the carcass of a hamadryad which he had killed in the 
garden. The hamadryad, as you probably know, is 
perhaps the deadliest of all Eastern reptiles. Its bite 
usually causes death in a few minutes. Moreover, it is 



OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE 37 

one of the few snakes that will attack human beings 
without provocation. The husband, with two other 
chaps, both officers in his battalion, was sitting on the 
verandah when the snake was brought in. 

" 'I say,' suggested one of the officers, 'here's a 
chance to break Madge of her fear of snakes. Why 
not curl this fellow up on her bed? She'll get a jolly 
good fright, of course, but when she discovers that 
he's dead and that she's been panicky about nothing, 
she'll get over her silly fear of the beggars. What 
say, old chap?' 

"To this insane suggestion, in spite of the protests 
of the other officer, the husband assented. Probably 
he had been having too many brandies and sodas. I 
don't know. But in any event, they put the witless 
idea into execution. Toward nightfall the young wife 
returned. She had on a frock of some thin, slinky 
stuff and a droopy garden hat with flowers on it and 
carried a sunshade. She was awfully pretty. She 
hadn't been out there long enough to lose her English 
coloring, you see. 

" 'Oh, I say, Madge,' called her husband, 'There's 
a surprise for you in your bedroom.' 

"With a little cry of 'delighted anticipation she hur- 
ried into the house. She thought her husband had 
bought her a gift, I suppose. A moment later the 
trio waiting on the verandah heard a piercing shriek. 
The first shriek was followed by another and then 
another. Pretty soon, though, the screams died 
down to a whimper — a sort of sobbing moan. Then 



38 STRANGE TRAILS 

silence. After a few minutes, as there was no further 
sound from the bedroom and his wife did not reap- 
pear, the husband became uneasy. He rose to enter 
the house, but the chap who had suggested the scheme 
pulled him back. 

" 'She's all right,' he assured him. 'She sees it's a 
joke and she's keeping quiet so as to frighten you. If 
you go in there now the laugh will be on you. She'll 
be out directly.' 

"But as the minutes passed and she did not reap- 
pear all three of the men became increasingly uneasy. 

" 'We'd better have a look,' the one who had de- 
murred suggested after a quarter of an hour had 
passed, during which no further sound had come from 
the bedroom. 'Madge is very high-strung. She may 
have fainted from the shock. I told you fellows that 
it was an idiotic thing to do.' 

"When they opened the door they thought that she 
had fainted, for she lay in an inert heap on the floor 
at the foot of the bed. But a hasty examination 
showed them, to their horror, that the girl was dead 
— heart failure, presumably. But when they raised 
her from the floor they discovered the real cause of 
her death, for a second hamadryad, which had been 
concealed by her skirts, darted noiselessly under the 
bed. It was the mate of the one that had been killed 
— for hamadryads always travel in pairs, you know 
— and had evidently entered the room in quest of its 
companion." 

"What happened to the husband and to the man 



OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE 39 

who suggested the plan?" I asked. "Were they pun- 
ished?" 

"They were punished right enough," the constabu- 
lary officer said dryly. "The chap who suggested the 
scheme tried to forget it in drink, was cashiered from 
the army and died of delirium tremens. As for the 
husband, he is still living — in a madhouse." 

Even In so far-distant a corner of the Empire as 
Borneo, ten thousand miles from the lights of the res- 
taurants in Piccadilly, the men religiously observe the 
English ritual of dressing for dinner, for when the 
mercury climbs to no, though the temptation is to go 
about in pajamas, one's drenched body and drooping 
spirits need to be bolstered up with a stiff shirt and a 
white mess jacket. That the stiffest shirt-front is 
wilted in an hour makes no difference : it reminds them 
that they are still Englishmen. Nor, in view of the 
appalling loneliness of the life, is it to be wondered 
at that the Chinese bartenders at the club are kept 
busy until far into the night, and that every month or 
so the entire male white population goes on a terrific 
spree. The government doctor in Sandakan assured 
me very earnestly that, in order to stand the climate, 
it is necessary to keep one's liver afloat — in alcohol. 
He had contributed to thus preserving the livers and 
lives of his fellow exiles by the invention of two 
drinks, of which he was inordinately proud. One he 
had dubbed "Tarantula Juice;" the other he called 
"Whisper of Death." He told me that the amateur 



40 STRANGE TRAILS 

who took three drinks of the latter would have no 
further need for his services; the only person whose 
services he would require would be the undertaker. 

There is something of the pathetic in the eagerness 
with which the white men who dwell In exile along 
these forgotten seaboards long for news from Home. 
After dinner they would cluster about me on the club 
verandah and clamor for those odds-and-ends of 
English gossip which are not important enough for in- 
clusion In the laconic cable despatches posted daily on 
the club bulletin-board and which the two-months-old 
newspapers seldom mention. They insisted that 
I repeat the jokes which were being cracked by 
the comedians at the Criterion and the Shaftes- 
bury. They wanted to know if toppers and tail- 
coats were again being worn in The Row. They 
pleaded for the gossip of the clubs in Pall Mall and 
Piccadilly. They begged me to tell them about the 
latest books and plays and songs. But after a time I 
persuaded them to do the talking, while I lounged in 
a deep cane chair, a tall, thin glass, with ice tinkling in 
it, at my elbow, and listened spellbound to strange 
dramas of "the Islands" recited by men who had them- 
selves played the leading roles. At first they were 
shy, as well-bred English often arc, but after much 
urging an officer of constabulary, the glow from his 
cigar lighting up his sun-bronzed face and the rows of 
campaign ribbons on his white jacket, was persuaded 
into telling how he had trailed a marauding band of 
head-hunters right across Borneo, from coast to coast, 



OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE 41 

his only companions a handful of Dyak police, them- 
selves but a degree removed in savagery from those 
they were pursuing. A bespectacled, studious-looking 
man, whom I had taken for a scientist or a college 
professor, but who, I learned, had made a fortune 
buying bird-of-paradise plumes for the European mar- 
ket, described the strange and revolting customs prac- 
tised by the cannibals of New Guinea. Then a broad- 
shouldered, bearded Dutchman, a very Hercules of a 
man, with a voice like a bass drum, told, between 
meditative puffs at his pipe, of hair-raising adventures 
In capturing wild animals, so that those smug and shel- 
tered folk at home who visit the zoological gardens of 
a Sunday afternoon might see for themselves the croco- 
dile and the boa-constrictor, the orang-utan and the 
clouded tiger. When, after the last tale had been told 
and the last glass had been drained, we strolled out 
into the fragrant tropic night, with the Cross swing- 
ing low to the morn, I felt as though, in the space of 
a single evening, I had lived through a whole library 
of adventure. 

I once wrote — in The Last Frontier, If I remember 
rightly — that when the English occupy a country the 
first thing they build is a custom-house ; the first thing 
the Germans build is a barracks; the first thing the 
French build is a railway. As a result of my observa- 
tions in Malaysia, however, I am inclined to amend 
this by saying that the first thing the English build Is 
a race course. Lord Cromer was fond of telling how, 



42 STRANGE TRAILS 

when he visited Perim, a miserable little island at the 
foot of the Red Sea, inhabited by a few Arabs and 
many snakes, his guide took him to the top of a hill 
and pointed out the race course. 

"But what do you want with a race course?" de- 
manded the great proconsul. "I didn't suppose that 
there was a four-footed animal on the island." 

The guide reluctantly admitted that, though they 
had no horses on the island at the moment, if some 
were to come, why, there was the race course ready 
for them. Though I don't recall having seen more 
than a dozen horses in Borneo, the British have been 
true to their traditions by building two race courses: 
one at Sandakan and one at Jesselton. On the latter 
is run annually the North Borneo Derby. It is the 
most brilliant sporting and social event of the year, the 
Europeans flocking into Jesselton from the little trad- 
ing stations along the coast and from the lonely plan- 
tations in the interior just as their friends back in 
England flock to Goodwood and Newmarket and 
Epsom. The Derby is always followed by the Hunt 
Ball. In spite of the fact that there are at least 
twenty men to every woman this is always a tremen- 
dous success. It usually ends in everyone getting 
gloriously drunk. 

Almost the only other form of entertainment is 
provided by a company of Malay players which makes 
periodical visits to Sandakan and Jesselton. Though 
the actors speak only Malay, this does not deter them 
from including a number of Shakesperian plays in their 



OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE 43 

repertoire (imagine Macbeth being played by a com- 
pany of piratical-looking Malays in a nipa hut on the 
shores of the Sulu Sea!) but they attain their greatest 
heights in Jli Baba and the Forty Thieves. There are 
no programmes, but, in order that the audience may not 
be left in doubt as to the identity of the players, the 
manager introduces the members of his company one 
by one. "This is Ali Baba," he announces, leading a 
fat and greasy Oriental to the footlights. "This is 
Fatimah." "These are the Forty Thieves." When 
the latter announcement is made four actors stalk ten 
times across the stage in naive simulation of the speci- 
fied number. After the thieves have concealed them- 
selves behind pasteboard silhouettes of jars, Ali Baba's 
wife waddles on the stage bearing a Standard Oil tin 
on her shoulder and with a dipper proceeds to ladle a 
few drops of cocoanut oil on the head of each of the 
robbers. While she is being introduced one of the 
thieves seizes the opportunity to take a few whiffs from 
a cigarette, the smoke being plainly visible to the 
audience. Another, wearying of his cramped position, 
incautiously shows his head, whereupon Mrs. Ali Baba 
raps it sharply with her dipper, eliciting from the actor 
an exclamation not in his lines. During the intermis- 
sions the clown who accompanies the troupe convulses 
the audience with side-splitting imitations of the pom- 
pous and frigid Governor, who, as someone unkindly 
remarked, "must have been born in an ice-chest," and 
of the bemoustached and bemonocled officer who com- 
mands the constabulary, locally referred to as the 



44 STRANGE TRAILS 

Galloping Major. Compared with the antics of these 
Malay comedians, the efforts of our own professional 
laugh-makers seem dull and forced. Until you have 
seen them you have never really laughed. 

His Highness Haji Mohamed Jamalulhiram, Sul- 
tan of Sulu, was temporarily sojourning in Sandakan 
when we were there, having come across from his 
capital of Jolo for the purpose of collecting the 
monthly subsidy of live hundred pesos paid him by the 
British North Borneo Company for certain territorial 
concessions. The company would have sent the money 
to Jolo, of course, but the Sultan preferred to come to 
Sandakan to collect it; there are better facilities for 
gambling there. 

Because I was curious to see the picturesque per- 
sonage around whom George Ade wrote his famous 
opera, The Sultan of Sulu, and because the Lovely 
Lady and the Winsome Widow had read in a Sun- 
day supplement that he made it a practise to present 
those American women whom he met with pearls of 
great price, upon our arrival at Sandakan I invited the 
Sultan to dinner aboard the Negros. When I called 
on him at his hotel to extend the invitation, I found 
him clad in a very soiled pink kimono, a pair of red 
velvet slippers, and a smile made somewhat gory by 
the betel-nut he had been chewing, but when he came 
aboard the Negros that evening he wore a red fez and 
irreproachable dinner clothes of white linen. As the 
crew of the cutter was entirely composed of Tagalogs 



OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE 45 

and Visayans, from the northern Philippines, who, 
being Christians, regard the Mohammedan Moro with 
contempt, not unmixed with fear, when I called for 
side-boys to line the starboard rail when his High- 
ness came aboard, there were distinctly mutinous 
mutterings. Captain Galvez tactfully settled the mat- 
ter, however, by explaining to the crew that the Sul- 
tan was, after all, an American subject, which seemed 
to mollify, even if it did not entirely satisfy them. 
The armament of the Negros had been removed after 
the armistice, so that we were without anything in the 
nature of a saluting cannon, but, as we wished to 
observe all the formalities of naval etiquette, the Doc- 
tor and Hawkinson volunteered to fire a royal salute 
with their automatic pistols as the Sultan came over 
the side. That, in their enthusiasm, they lost count 
and gave him about double the number of "guns" 
prescribed for the President of the United States 
caused Haji Mohamed no embarrassment; on the con- 
trary. It seemed to please him immensely. (Donald 
Thompson, who was my photographer in Belgium 
during the early days of the war, always made it a 
point to address every officer he met as "General." 
He explained that it never did any harm and that it 
always put the officer in good humor.) 

When the cocktails were served the Sultan gravely 
explained through the interpreter that, being a devout 
Mohammedan and a Haji, he never permitted alcohol 
to pass his lips, an assertion which he promptly pro- 
ceeded to prove by taking four Martinis in rapid sue- 



46 STRANGE TRAILS 

cession. Now the chef of the Negros possessed the 
faculty of camouflaging his dishes so successfully that 
neither by taste, looks nor smell could one tell with 
certainty what one was eating. So, when the meat, 
smothered in thick brown gravy, was passed to the 
Sultan, his Highness, who, like all True Believers, 
abhors pork, regarded it dubiously. "Pig?" he de- 
manded of the steward. "No, sare," was the fright- 
ened answer. "Cow." 

Over the coffee and cigarettes the Lovely Lady and 
the Winsome Widow tactfully led the conversation 
around to the subject of pearls, whereupon the Sultan 
thrust his hand into his pocket and produced a round 
pink box, evidently originally intended for pills. Re- 
moving the lid, he displayed, imbedded in cotton, half 
a dozen pearls of a size and quality such as one seldom 
sees outside the window of a Fifth Avenue jeweler. I 
could see that the Lovely Lady and the Winsome 
Widow were mentally debating as to whether they 
would have them set in brooches or rings. But when 
they had been passed from hand to hand, accompanied 
by the customary exclamations of envy and admiration, 
back they went into the royal pocket again. "And to 
think," one of the party remarked afterward, "that 
we wasted two bottles of perfectly good gin and a 
bottle of vermouth on him I" 

It was after midnight when our guest took his 
departure, the ship's orchestra playing him over the 
side with a selection from The Sultan of Sulu, which, 
in view of my ignorance as to whether Sulu possessed 



OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE 47 

a national anthem, seemed highly appropriate to the 
occasion. As the launch bearing the Sultan shot shore- 
ward Hawkinson set off a couple of magnesium flares, 
which he had brought along for the purpose of taking 
pictures at night, making the whole harbor of Sanda- 
kan as bright as day. I heard afterward that the 
Sultan remarked that we were the only visitors since 
the Taft party who really appreciated his importance. 

Two hours steam off the towering promontory 
which guards the entrance to Sandakan harbor lies 
Baguian, a sandy islet covered with cocoanut-palms, 
which is so small that it is not shown on ordinary 
maps. Though the island is, for some unexplained 
reason, under the jurisdiction of the British North 
Borneo Company, it is a part of the Sulu Archipelago 
and belongs to the United States. Baguian is famed 
throughout those seas as a rookery for the giant tor- 
toise — testudo elephantopus. Toward nightfall the 
mammoth chelonians — some of them weigh upward 
of half a ton — come ashore in great numbers to lay 
their eggs in nests made in the edge of the jungle 
which fringes the beach, the old Chinaman and his 
two assistants, who are the only inhabitants of the 
island, frequently collecting as many as four thousand 
eggs in a single morning. The eggs, which in size and 
color exactly resemble ping-pong balls and are almost 
as unbreakable, are collected once a fortnight by a 
junk which takes them to China, where they are con- 
sidered great delicacies and command high prices. As 



48 STRANGE TRAILS 

we had brought with us a supply of magnesium flares 
for night photography, we decided to take the camera 
ashore and attempt to obtain pictures of the turtles 
on their nests. 

As we were going ashore in the gig we caught sight 
of a huge bull, as large as a hogshead, which was 
floating on the surface. Ordering the sailors to row 
quietly, we succeeded in getting within a hundred 
yards before I let go with my .405, the soft-nosed 
bullet tearing a great hole in the turtle's neck and 
dyeing the water scarlet. Almost before the sound of 
the shot had died away one of the Filipino boat's 
crew went overboard with a rope, which he attempted 
to attach to the monster before it could sink to the 
bottom, but the turtle, though desperately wounded, 
was still very much alive, giving the sailor a blow on 
his head with its flapper which all but knocked him 
senseless. By the time we had hauled the man into 
the boat the turtle had disappeared into the depths. 

Waiting until darkness had fallen, we sent parties 
of sailors, armed with electric torches, along the beach 
in both directions with orders to follow the tracks 
made by the turtles in crossing the sand, and to notify 
us by firing a revolver when they located one. We did 
not have long to wait before we heard the signal 
agreed upon, and, picking up the heavy camera, we 
plunged across the sands to where the sailors were 
awaiting us in the edge of the bush. While the blue- 
jackets cut off the retreat of the hissing, snapping 
monster, Hawkinson set up his camera and, when all 



OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE 49 

was ready, some one touched off a flare, illuminating 
the beach and jungle as though the search-light of a 
warship had been turned upon them. In this manner 
we obtained a series of motion-pictures which are, I 
believe, from the zoological standpoint, unique. Be- 
fore leaving the' island we killed two tortoises for food 
for the crew — enough to keep them in turtle soup for 
a month. The larger, which I shot with a revolver, 
weighed slightly over five hundred pounds and lived 
for several days with three .45 caliber bullets in its 
brain-pan. Everything considered, it was a very in- 
teresting expedition. The only person who did not 
enjoy it was the old Chinese who held the concession 
for collecting the turtle-eggs. Instead of recognizing 
the great value of the service we were rendering to 
science, he acted as though we were robbing his hen- 
roost. He had a sordid mind. 



CHAPTER III 

"where there ain't no ten commandments" 

Until I went to British North Borneo I had con- 
sidered the British the best colonial administrators 
in the world. And, generally speaking, I hold to that 
opinion. But what I saw and heard in that remote 
and neglected corner of the Empire disclosed a state 
of affairs which I had not dreamed could exist in any 
land over which flies the British flag. It was not the 
Iniquitous character of the administration which sur- 
prised me, for I had seen the effects of bad colonial 
administration in other distant lands — in Mozam- 
bique, for example, and in Germany's former African 
possessions — ^but rather that such an administration 
should be carried on by Englishmen, by Anglo-Saxons. 
Were you to read in your morning paper that an ignor- 
ant alien had been arrested for brutally mistreating 
one of his children you would not be particularly sur- 
prised, because that is the sort of thing that might be 
expected from such a man. But were you to read that 
a neighbor, a man who went to the same church and 
belonged to the same clubs, whom you had known and 
respected all your life, had been arrested for mistreat- 
ing one of his children, you would be shocked and 
horrified. 

50 



"NO TEN COMMANDMENTS" 51 

Save on the charge of indifference and neglect, 
neither the British people nor the British government 
can be held responsible for the conditions existing in 
North Borneo, for strictly speaking, the country is not 
a British colony, but merely a British protectorate, 
being owned and administered by a private trading 
corporation, the British North Borneo Company, 
which operates under a royal charter. But the idea 
of turning over a great block of territory, with its 
inhabitants, to a corporation whose sole aim is to earn 
dividends for its absentee stockholders, is in itself 
abhorrent to most Americans. What would we say, 
I ask you, if Porto Rico, which is only one-tenth the 
size of North Borneo, were to be handed over, lock, 
stock and barrel, to the Standard Oil Company, with 
full authorization for that company to make its own 
laws, establish its own courts, appoint its own officials, 
maintain its own army, and to wield the power of life 
and death over the natives? And, conceiving such a 
condition, what would we say if the Standard Oil 
Company, in order to swell its revenues, not only per- 
mitted but officially encouraged opium smoking and 
gambling; if, in order to obtain labor for its planta- 
tions, it imported large numbers of ignorant blacks 
from Haiti and permitted the planters to hold those 
laborers, through indenture and indebtedness, in a 
form of servitude not far removed from slavery; if it 
authorized the punishment of recalcitrant laborers by 
flogging with the cat-o'nine-tails ; if it denied to the 
natives as well as to the imported laborers a system 



52 STRANGE TRAILS 

of public education or a public health service or trial 
by jury; and finally, if, in the event of insurrection, 
it permitted its soldiery, largely recruited from savage 
tribes, to decapitate their prisoners and to bring their 
ghastly trophies into the capital and pile them in a 
pyramid in the principal plaza? Yet that would be a 
fairly close parallel to what the chartered company is 
doing in British North Borneo. As I have already 
remarked. North Borneo is a British protectorate. 
And it is in more urgent need of protection from those 
who are exploiting it than any country I know. But 
the voices of the natives are very weak and West- 
minster is far away. 

With the exception of Rhodesia, and of certain ter- 
ritories in Portuguese Africa, North Borneo is the 
sole remaining region in the world which is owned and 
administered by that political anachronism, a char- 
tered company. It was in the age of Elizabeth that 
the chartered company, in the modern sense of the 
term, had its rise. The discovery of the New World 
and the opening out of fresh trading routes to the 
Indies gave a tremendous impetus to shipping, com- 
mercial and industrial enterprises throughout western 
Europe and it was in order to encourage these enter- 
prises that the British, Dutch and French governments 
granted charters to various trading associations. It 
was the Russia Company, for example, which received 
its first charter in 1554, which first brought England 
into intercourse with an empire then unknown. The 
Turkey Company — later known as the Levant Com- 



"NO TEN COMMANDMENTS" 53 

pany — long maintained British prestige in the Otto- 
man Empire and even paid the expenses of the embas- 
sies sent out by the British Government to the Sublime 
Porte. The Hudson's Bay Company, which still exists 
as a purely commercial concern, was for nearly two 
centuries the undisputed ruler of western Canada. 
The extraordinary and picturesque career of the East 
India Company is too well known to require com- 
ment here. In fact, most of the thirteen British colo- 
nies in North America were in their inception char- 
tered companies very much in the modern acceptation 
of the term. But, though these companies contributed 
in no small degree to the commercial progress of the 
states from which they held their charters, though 
they gave colonies to the mother countries and an 
impetus to the development of their fleets, they were 
all too often characterized by misgovernment, incom- 
petence, injustice and cruelty in their dealings with 
the natives. Moreover, they were monopolies, and 
therefore, obnoxious, and almost without exception the 
colonies they founded became prosperous and well- 
governed only when they had escaped from their yoke. 
The existence of such companies today is justified — if 
at all — only by certain political and economic reasons. 
It may be desirable for a government to occupy a 
certain territory, but political exigencies at home may 
not permit it to incur the expense, or international 
relations may make such an adventure inexpedient at 
the time. In such circumstances, the formation of a 
chartered company to take over the desired territory 



54 STRANGE TRAILS 

may be the easiest way out of the difficulty. But It 
has been demonstrated again and again that a char- 
tered company can never be anything but a transition 
stage of colonization and that sooner or later the 
home government must take over Its powers and 
privileges. 

The story of the rise of the British North Borneo 
Company provides an Illuminating insight Into the 
methods by which that Empire On Which the Sun 
Never Sets has acquired many of its far-flung pos- 
sessions. Though the British had established trading 
posts in northern Borneo as early as 1759, and had 
obtained the cession of the whole northeastern pro- 
montory from the Sultan of Sulu, who was Its suzerain, 
the hostility of the natives, who resented their transfer 
to alien rule, was so pronounced that the treaty soon 
became virtually a dead letter and by the end of the 
century British influence In Borneo was to all Intents 
and purposes at an end. Nor was It resumed until 
1838, when an adventurous Englishman, James 
Brooke, landed at Kuching and eventually made him- 
self the "White Rajah" of Sarawak. In 1848 the 
Island of Labuan, off the northwestern coast of Bor- 
neo, was occupied by the British as a crown colony 
and some years later the Labuan Trading Company 
established a trading post at Sandakan. In an at- 
tempt to open up the country and to start plantations 
the company Imported a considerable number of 
Chinese laborers, but It did not prosper and its finan- 
cial affairs steadily went from bad to worse. As 



"NO TEN COMMANDMENTS" 55 

long as the company kept its representative in Sanda- 
kan supplied with funds he managed to maintain a 
certain authority among the natives. But one day he 
received a letter bearing the London postmark from 
the company's chairman. It read: 

"Sir: We are sorry to inform you that we cannot 
send you further funds, but you should not let this 
prevent you from keeping up your dignity." 

To which the agent replied : 

"Sir: I have on a pair of trousers and a flannel 
shirt — all I possess in the world. I think my dignity 
is about played out." 

Another syndicate for the exploitation of North 
Borneo was formed in England in 1878, however, to 
which the Sultan of Sulu was induced to transfer all 
his rights in that region, of which he had been from 
time immemorial the overlord. Four years later this 
syndicate, now known as the British North Borneo 
Company, took over all the sovereign and diplo- 
matic rights ceded by the original grants and pro- 
ceeded to organize and administer the territory. In 
1886 North Borneo was made a British protectorate, 
but its administration remained entirely in the hands 
of the company, the Crown reserving only control of 
its foreign relations, though it was also agreed that 
governors appointed by the company should receive 
the formal sanction of the British Colonial Secretary. 
To quote the chairman of the board of directors: "We 
are not a trading company. We are a government, 



56 STRANGE TRAILS 

an administration. The Colonial Office leaves us 
alone as long as we behave ourselves." 

The government is vested primarily in a board of 
directors who sit in London and few of whom have 
ever set foot in the country which they rule. The 
supreme authority in Borneo is the governor, under 
whom are the residents of the three chief districts, who 
occupy positions analogous to that of collector or 
magistrate. The six less important districts are ad- 
ministered by district magistrates, who also collect the 
taxes. Though there is a council, upon which the 
principal heads of departments and one unofficial mem- 
ber have seats, it meets irregularly and its functions 
are largely ornamental, the governor exercising vir- 
tually autocratic power. Unfortunately, there is no 
imperial official, as in Rhodesia, to supervise the com- 
pany's activities. As was the case with the East India 
Company, the minor posts in the North Borneo serv- 
ice are filled by cadets nominated by the board of 
directors, a system which provides a considerable num- 
ber of positions for younger sons, poor relations and 
titled ne'er-do-wells. Most of the officials go out to 
Borneo as cadets, serve a long and arduous appren- 
ticeship in one of the most trying climates in the world, 
are miserably paid (I knew one official who held five 
posts at the same time, including those of assistant 
magistrate and assistant protector of labor and who 
received for his services the equivalent of $ioo. a 
month), and eventually retire, broken In health, on a 
pension which permits them to live in a Bloomsbury 



"NO TEN COMMANDMENTS" 57 

lodging-house, to ride on a tuppenny'bus, and to occa- 
sionally visit the cinema. 

There is no trial by jury in North Borneo, all cases 
being decided by the magistrates, who are appointed 
by the company and who must be qualified barristers. 
Nor are there mixed courts, as in Egypt and other 
Oriental countries, though in the more important cases 
five or six assessors, either native or Chinese, accord- 
ing to the nationality of those involved, are permitted 
to listen to the evidence and to submit recommenda- 
tions, which the magistrate may follow or not, as he 
sees fit. Neither is there a court of appeal, the only 
recourse from the decision of a magistrate being an 
appeal to the governor, whose decision is final. 

The country is policed by a force of constabulary 
numbering some six hundred men, comprising Sikhs, 
Pathans, Punjabi Mohammedans, Malays, and Dyaks, 
officered by a handful of Europeans. Curiously 
enough, the tall, dignified, deeply religious Sikhs and 
the little, nervous, high-strung Dyak pagans get on 
very well together, eating, sleeping and drilling in 
perfect harmony. Though the Dyak members of the 
constabulary are recruited from the wild tribes of the 
interior, most of them having indulged in the national 
pastime of head-hunting until they donned the com- 
pany's uniform, they make excellent soldiers, courage- 
ous, untiring, and remarkably loyal. Upon King 
Edward's accession to the throne a small contingent 
of Dyak police was sent to England to march in the 
coronation procession. When, owing to the serious 



58 STRANGE TRAILS 

Illness of the king, the coronation was indefinitely 
postponed and it was proposed to send the Dyaks 
home, the little brown fighters stubbornly refused to 
go, asserting that they would not dare to show their 
faces in Borneo without having seen the king. They 
did not wish to put the company to any expense, they 
explained, so they would give up their uniforms and 
live in the woods on what they could pick up if they 
were permitted to remain until they could see their 
ruler. 

Though the Dyaks make excellent soldiers, as I 
have said, they are always savages at heart. In fact, 
when they are used in operations against rebellious 
natives, their officers permit and sometimes actively 
encourage their relapse into the barbarous custom of 
taking heads. An official who was stationed in San- 
dakan during the insurrection of 1908 told me that 
for days the police came swaggering into town with 
dripping heads hanging from their belts and that they 
piled these grisly trophies in a pyramid eight feet high 
on the parade ground in front of the government 
buildings. Imagine, if you please, the storm of indig- 
nation and disgust which would have swept the United 
States had American officers permitted the Maccabebe 
Scouts, who served with our troops against the in- 
surgents in the Aguinaldo insurrection, to decapitate 
their Filipino prisoners and to bring the heads into 
Manila and pile them in a pyramid on the Luneta 1 

Though the term Dyak is often carelessly applied 
to all the natives of North Borneo, as a matter of 



"NO TEN COMMANDMENTS" 59 

fact the Dyaks form only a small minority of the 
population, the bulk of the inhabitants being Bajows, 
Dusuns and Muruts. The Bajows, who are Mo- 
hammedans and first cousins of the Moros of the 
southern Philippines, are found mainly along the east 
coast of Borneo. They are a dark-skinned, wild, sea- 
gipsy race, rovers, smugglers and river thieves. 
Though, thanks to the stern measures adopted by the 
British and the Americans, they no longer indulge in 
piracy, which was long their favorite occupation, they 
still find profit and excitement in running arms and 
opium across the Sulu Sea to the Moro Islands, in 
attacking lonely light-houses, or in looting stranded 
merchantmen. It is the last coast in the world that I 
would choose to be shipwrecked on. 

The Dusuns and the Muruts, who are generally 
found in widely scattered villages in the jungles of 
the interior, represent a very low stage of civilization, 
being unspeakably filthy in their habits and frequently 
becoming disgustingly intoxicated on a liquor of their 
own manufacture — the Bornean equivalent of home 
brew. A Murut or Dusun village usually consists of 
a single long hut divided into a great number of small 
rooms, one for each family — a jungle apartment 
house, as it were. These rooms open out into a com- 
mon gallery or verandah along which the heads taken 
by the warriors of the tribe are festooned. It is as 
though the tenants of a New York apartment house 
had the heads of the landlord and the rent-collector 
and the janitor swinging over the front entrance. I 



6o STRANGE TRAILS 

should add, perhaps, that the practise of head-hunt- 
ing — of which I shall speak at greater length when 
we reach Dutch Borneo — Is fostered and encouraged 
by the unmarried women, for every self-respecting 
Bornean girl demands that her suitor shall establish his 
social position in the tribe by acquiring a respectable 
number of heads, just as an American girl insists that 
the man she marries must provide her with a solitaire, 
a flat and a flivver. 

Though the chartered company has ruled in North 
Borneo for more than forty years, it has only nibbled 
at the edges of the country. The interior is still un- 
civilized and largely unexplored, the home of savage 
animals and still more savage men. Though a rail- 
way has been pushed up-country from Jesselton for 
something over a hundred miles, both road and roll- 
ing-stock leave much to be desired, the little tin-pot 
locomotives not infrequently leaving the rails alto- 
gether and landing in the river. Some years ago an 
attempt was made to build a highway across the pro- 
tectorate, from coast to coast, but after sixty miles 
had been completed the project was abandoned. It 
was known as the Sketchley Road and ran through a 
rank and miasmatic jungle, it being said that every 
hundred yards of construction cost the life of a Chinese 
laborer and that those who were left died at the end. 
Today it is only a memory, having long since been 
swallowed up by the fast-growing vegetation. 

The company has taken no steps toward establishing 
a system of public schools, as we have done in the 




^« 



"NO TEN COMMANDMENTS" 6i 

Philippines, for it holds to the outworn theory that, 
so far as the natives are concerned, a little learning 
is a dangerous thing. Perhaps the company is right. 
Were the natives to acquire a little learning it might 
prove dangerous — for the company. There are a few 
schools in North Borneo, but they are maintained by 
the Protestant and Roman Catholic missions and are 
attended mainly by Chinese. Whether they have 
proved as potent an influence in the propagation of 
the Christian faith as their founders anticipated is 
open to doubt. When I was in Sandakan I made 
some purchases in the bazaars from a Chinese lad who 
addressed me quite fluently in my own tongue. 

"How does it happen that you speak such good Eng- 
lish?" I asked him. 

"Go to school," he grunted, none too amiably. 

"Where? To a public school?" 

"No public school. Church school." 

"So you're a good Christian now, I suppose?" I 
remarked. 

"To hell with Clistianity," he retorted. "Me go 
to school to learn English." 

The chartered company maintains no public health 
service, nor, so far as I was able to discover, has it 
adopted the most rudimentary sanitary or quarantine 
precautions. It is, indeed, so notoriously lax in this 
respect that when we touched at ports in Dutch Bor- 
neo, the Celebes, and Java, the mere fact that we had 
come from British North Borneo caused the health 



62 STRANGE TRAILS 

officers to view us with grave suspicion. When we 
were in Sandakan the town was undergoing a periodic 
visitation of that deadliest and most terrifying of all 
Oriental diseases, bubonic plague. As it is transmitted 
by the fleas on plague-infested rats, we took the pre- 
caution, when we went ashore, of wearing boots and 
breeches or of tying the bottoms of our trousers about 
our ankles with string, so as to prevent the fleas from 
biting us. It being necessary to go alongside the coal- 
wharves in order to replenish the bunkers of the 
Negros, orders were given that rat-guards — circular 
pieces of tin about the size of a barrel-top — should 
be fixed to our hawsers, thus making it difficult, if not 
impossible, for rats to invade the ship by that route, 
while sailors armed with clubs were posted along the 
landward rail to despatch any rodents that might suc- 
ceed in gaining the deck. As the native and Chinese 
laborers had fled in terror from the wharves, where 
the dreaded disease had first manifested itself through 
the deaths of several stevedores, the authorities of- 
fered their freedom to those prisoners in the local jail 
who would volunteer for the hazardous work of clean- 
ing up the wharves and warehouses and sprinkling 
them with petroleum. Six prisoners volunteered, but 
they might better have served out their terms, for the 
next day four of them were dead. Though the stout 
Cockney, harbormaster, known as "Pinkie" because 
of his rosy complexion, was pallid with fear, the other 
European residents of Sandakan seemed utterly indif- 
ferent to the danger to which they were exposed. But 



"NO TEN COMMANDMENTS" 63 

life in a land like Borneo breeds fatalism. As an 
official remarked, with a shrug of his shoulders, "After 
you have spent a few years out here you don't much 
care how you die, or how soon. Plague is as conven- 
ient a way of going out as any other." 

The greatest obstacle to the successful development 
of Borneo's enormous natural resources is the labor 
problem. The truth of the matter is that life in these 
tropical islands is too easy for the natives' own good. 
In a land where a man has no need for clothing, being, 
indeed, more comfortable without it; where he can 
pick his food from the trees or catch it with small 
effort in the sea; and where bamboos and nipa are all 
the materials required for a perfectly satisfactory 
dwelling, there is no incentive for work. It being im- 
possible, therefore, to depend on native labor, the com- 
pany has been forced to import large numbers of 
coolies from China. These coolies, whom the labor 
agents attract with promises of high wages, a delight- 
ful climate, unlimited opium, and other things dear to 
the Chinese heart, are employed under an indenture 
system, the duration of their contracts being limited 
by law to three hundred days. That sounds, on the 
face of it, like a safeguard against peonage. The 
trouble is, however, that it is easily circumvented. 
Here is the way it works in practise. Shortly after 
the laborer reaches the plantation where he is to be 
employed he is given an advance on his pay, frequently 
amounting to thirty Singapore dollars, which he is en- 



64 STRANGE TRAILS 

couraged to dissipate in the opium dens and gambling 
houses maintained on the plantation. Any one who 
has any knowledge of the Chinese coolie will realize 
how temperamentally incapable he is of resistance 
where opium and gambling are concerned. This 
pernicious system of advances has the effect, as 
it is intended to have, of chaining the laborer to the 
plantation by debt. For the first advance is usually 
followed by a second, and sometimes by a third, and 
to this debit column are added the charges made for 
food, for medical attendance, for opium, and for pur- 
chases made at the plantation store, so that, upon the 
expiration of his three-hundred-day contract, the la- 
borer almost invariably owes his employer a debt which 
he Is quite unable to pay. As he cannot obtain employ- 
ment elsewhere in the colony under these conditions, 
he is faced with the alternative of being shipped back 
to China a pauper or of signing another contract. 
There Is no breaking of the law by the planter, you see : 
the laborer is perfectly free to leave when his con- 
tract has expired — as free as any man can be who is 
absolutely penniless- 
Let me quote from a letter from the former As- 
sistant Protector of Labor of British North Borneo. 
From the very nature of his duties he knows whereof 
he speaks: 

"One sees a large number of healthy, able-bodied 
Chinese coming into the country as laborers and, 
at the end of a year or two, instead of going back to 
their homes with money in their pockets and healthy 



"NO TEN COMMANDMENTS" 65 

with outdoor work, they go back as broken beggars, 
pitifully saturated with disease or confirmed drug 
fiends. It is really sad to see some of them return 
home after a struggle of four or five years to save 
money — a struggle not only against themselves and 
their acquired opium habit, but against the numerous 
parasites which always fatten on laborers." 

During the term of his indenture the laborer is to all 
intents and purposes a prisoner, his only appeal against 
any injustices practised on the plantation being to the 
Protector of Labor, who is supposed to visit each 
estate once a month. In theory this system is admir- 
able, but in practise it does not afford the laborer the 
protection which the law intends, for it frequently 
happens that laborers who have been brutally mis- 
treated have been coerced into silence by the plantation 
managers by threats of what will happen to them if 
they dare to lay a complaint before the inspecting 
official. Moreover, many of the plantations are so 
remotely situated, so far removed from civilization, 
that a manager can treat his laborers as he pleases 
with little fear of detection or punishment. If negroes 
are held in peonage, flogged, and even murdered on 
plantations in our own South, within rifle-shot of court- 
houses and sheriffs' offices and churches, is it to be won- 
dered at that similar conditions can and do exist in the 
world-distant jungles of Borneo. Mind you, I do not 
say that such conditions exist on all or most of the 
estates in British North Borneo, but I have the best 



66 STRANGE TRAILS 

of reasons for believing that they exist on some of 
them. 

One of the most serious defects in the labor laws of 
North Borneo is that trivial actions or omissions on 
the part of ignorant coolies, such as misconduct, neglect 
of work, or absence from the estate without leave, are 
punishable by imprisonment. As a result, the illiterate 
and incoherent coolie does not know where he stands. 
He can never be sure that some trivial action on his 
part, no matter how innocent his intent, will not bring 
him within reach of the criminal law. He is, more- 
over, denied the right of trial by jury, his case usually 
being decided off-hand by a bored and unsympathetic 
magistrate who has no knowledge of the defendant's 
tongue. Moreover, the company's laws permit the 
punishment of unruly laborers by flogging, with a maxi- 
mum of twelve lashes. In view of the remoteness of 
most of the estates, it is scarcely necessary for me to 
point out that this is a form of punishment open to 
the gravest abuse. 

Although, as I have shown, the British North Bor- 
neo Company permits the existence of a system not far 
removed from slavery, a far more serious indictment 
of the company's administration lies in its systematic 
debauchery of its laborers by encouraging them to 
Indulge in opium smoking and gambling for the pur- 
pose of swelling its revenues. Nor does its heartless 
exploitation of the laborer end there, for when a 
coolie has dissipated all his earnings in the opium 
dens and gaming houses, which are run under govern- 



"NO TEN COMMANDMENTS" 67 

ment concessions, he can usually realize a little more 
money for the same purpose by pawning his few poor 
belongings at one of the pawnshops controlled by the 
company. In other words, from the day a laborer sets 
foot in Borneo until the day he departs, he is system- 
atically separated from his earnings, which are di- 
verted, through the channels provided by the opium 
dens, the gambling houses and the pawn shops, into a 
stream which eventually empties into the company's 
coffers. For, mark you, the chartered company did not 
go to North Borneo from any altruistic motives. It is 
animated by no desire to ameliorate the condition of 
the natives or to increase the well-being and happi- 
ness of its imported laborers. It is there with one ob- 
ject in view, and one alone — to pay dividends to its 
stockholders. As the chairman of the company said 
at a recent North Borneo dinner in London: "They 
have acted the parts of Empire makers and yet they 
are filling their own pockets, for the golden rain is 
beginning to fall." 

Let me show you where this "golden rain" comes 
from. The two principal sources of revenue of the 
British North Borneo Company are opium and gam- 
bling. Suppose that you come with me for a stroll 
down the Jalan Tiga in Sandakan and see the gaming 
houses and the opium dens for yourself. Jalan Tiga 
(literally "Number Two Street") is a moderately 
broad thoroughfare, perhaps a quarter of a mile in 
length, which is solidly lined on both sides with gam- 
bling houses, or, as they are called in Borneo, gambling 



68 STRANGE TRAILS 

farms, the term being due to the fact that the gambling 
privileges are farmed out by the government. There 
may be wickeder streets somewhere in the East 
than the Jalan Tiga, but I do not recall having 
seen them. It, and the thoroughfares immedi- 
ately adjoining, in which are situated the opium 
dens and the houses of prostitution, form a district 
which represents the very quintessence of Oriental 
vice. Over virtually every door are signs in Chi- 
nese, Malay and English announcing that games of 
chance are played within. Such resorts are not cam- 
ouflaged in Borneo. They are as open as a railway 
station or a public library in the United States. From 
afternoon until sunrise these resorts are crowded to 
the doors with half-naked, perspiring humanity, brown 
skins and yellow being in about equal proportions, for 
the Malay is as inveterate a gambler as the Chinese. 
The downstairs rooms, which are frequented by the 
lower classes, are thickly sprinkled with low tables 
covered with mats divided into four sections, each of 
which bears a number. A dice under a square brass 
cup is shaken on the table and the cup slowly raised. 
Those players who have been lucky enough to place 
their bets on the square whose number corresponds 
to the number uppermost on the dice have their money 
doubled, the others see their earnings swept into the 
lap of the croupier, a fat and greasy Chinaman, usually 
stripped to the waist. In this system the chances 
against the player are enormous. The play is very 
rapid, the dice being shaken, the cup raised, the win- 



"NO TEN COMMANDMENTS"- 69 

ners paid and the wagers of the losers raked in too 
quickly for the untrained eye to follow. The players 
seldom quit as long as they have any money left to 
wager, but as soon as one drops out there is another 
ready to take his place. The upstairs rooms, which 
are usually handsomely decorated and luxuriously fur- 
nished, are reserved for the wealthier patrons, it being 
by no means uncommon for a player to lose several 
thousand dollars in a single night. Here cards are 
generally used instead of dice to separate the players 
from their money, fan-tan being the favorite game. I 
was told that the monthly subsidy paid by the British 
North Borneo Company to the Sultan of Sulu, who 
comes over from Jolo with great regularity to collect 
it, never leaves the country, as he invariably loses it 
over a Sandakan gaming-table. Gambling is a gov- 
ernment monopoly in Borneo, the company farming 
out the privilege each year to the highest bidder. In 
1 9 19 the gambling rights for the entire protectorate 
were sold for approximately $144,000. 

Crossing the Jalan Tiga at right angles and run- 
ning from the heart of the town down to the edge of 
the harbor is the street of the prostitutes. It is easy 
to recognize the houses of ill-fame by their scarlet 
blinds and by the scarlet numbers over their doors. 
Should you stroll down the street during the day you 
will find the sullen-eyed inmates seated in the door- 
ways, brushing their long and lustrous blue-black hair 
or painting their faces in white and vermillion prepa- 
ratory to the evening's entertainment. Probably four- 



70 STRANGE TRAILS 

fifths of the jilles de joie in Sandakan are Chinese, the 
others are products of Nippon — quaint, dainty, doll- 
like little women with faces so heavily enameled that 
they would be cracked by a smile. When a Chinese 
merchant wants a wife he usually visits a house of pros- 
titution, selects one of the inmates, drives a hard bar- 
gain with the hard-eyed mistress of the establishment, 
and, the transaction concluded, brusquely tells the girl 
to pack her belongings and accompany him to his home. 
I might add that the girls thus chosen invariably make 
good wives and remain faithful to their husbands. 

Running parallel to the Jalan Tiga is another street 
— I do not recall its name — in which are the opium 
farms. Far from being veiled in secrecy, they are 
operated as openly as American soda fountains. A 
typical opium farm consists of a two-story wooden 
house, one of a long row of similar buildings, contain- 
ing a number of small, ill-lighted rooms which reek 
with the sickly sweet, fumes of the drug. The furni- 
ture consists of a number of so-called beds, which in 
reality are wooden platforms or tables, their tops, 
which are raised about three feet above the floor, pro- 
viding space on which two smokers can recline. Each 
smoker is provided with a block of wood which serves 
as a pillow and a small lamp for heating his "pill." 
The number of patrons who may be accommodated 
at one time is prescribed by law and rigidly enforced, 
signs denoting the authorized capacity of the house 
being posted at the door, like the signs in elevators 
and on ferry-boats in America. For example, the door 




The Jalan Tiga, Sandakan 
A moderately broad thoroughfare, lined on both sides with gambling-houses 






i 






A patron of a Sandakan opium farm 
Each smoker is provided with a lamp for heating his "pill" and a wooden head-rest 



"NO TEN COMMANDMENTS" 71 

of one farm that I visited bore the notice "Only fifteen 
beds. Room for thirty persons." Over-crowding is 
forbidden by the authorities, not, as in the case of ele- 
vators and ferry-boats, for reasons of safety, but for 
financial reasons. The more opium farms there are, 
you see, the greater the company's profits. 

The opium is purchased by the chartered company 
from the Government of the Straits Settlements for 
$1.20 a tael (about one-tenth of a pound troy) and, 
after being adulterated with various substances, is sold 
to the opium farmers, nearly all of whom are Chinese, 
for $8.50 a tael, the company thus making a very com- 
fortable margin of profit on the transaction. The 
opium farmers either keep opium dens themselves or 
sell the drug to anyone wishing to buy it, just as a to- 
bacconist sells cigars and cigarettes. The sale of the 
opium privilege in Sandakan alone nets the govern- 
ment, so I was informed, something over $500,000 
annually. 

Now, iniquitous and deplorable as such a traffic is, 
the British North Borneo administration is not the 
only government engaged in the sale of opium. But 
it is the only government, so far as I am aware, which 
virtually forces the drug on its people by insisting that 
it shall be purchasable in localities which might other- 
wise escape its malign influence. A planter who, 
actuated either by moral scruples or by a desire to 
maintain the efficiency of his laborers, opposes the 
opening of an opium farm on his estate, might as well 
sell out and leave Borneo, for the company will 



72 STRANGE TRAILS 

promptly retaliate for such interference with its reve- 
nues by cutting off his supply of labor. It will defend 
its action by naively asserting that, as the coolies would 
contrive to obtain the drug any way, the planter, in 
refusing to permit the opening of an opium farm 
on his property, is guilty of conniving at the illegal 
use of the drug! 

The British North Borneo Company professes to 
find justification for engaging in the opium traffic by 
insisting that, as the Chinese will certainly obtain 
opium clandestinely if they cannot obtain it openly, it is 
better for everyone concerned that its sale and use 
should be kept under government control. The fact 
remains, however, that China, decadent though she 
may be and desperately in need of increased revenues, 
has succeeded, in spite of the powerful opposition of 
the British-owned Opium Ring, in putting an end to the 
traffic within her borders, while Slam, likewise under 
Oriental rule, is about to do the same. It Is a curious 
commentary on European civilization that this vice, 
which the so-called "backward" races are vigorously 
attempting to stamp out, should be not only permitted 
but encouraged in a country over which flies the flag 
of England. Its effects on the population are summed 
up in this sentence from a letter written me by a former 
high official of the chartered company : "Fifty per cent 
of the thefts and robberies committed during the 
period that I was magistrate in that territory can be 
directly traced to opium and gambling." 



"NO TEN COMMANDMENTS" 73 

"There is held each year, at one of the great Lon- 
don hotels, the North Borneo Dinner. It is one of 
the most brilliant affairs of the season. At the head 
of the long table, banked with flowers and gleaming 
with glass and silver, sits the chairman of the char- 
tered company, flanked by cabinet ministers, arch- 
bishops, ambassadors, admirals, field marshals. The 
speakers work the audience into a fervor of patriotic 
pride by their sonorous word-pictures of England's 
services to humanity in bearing the white man's bur- 
den, and of the spread of enlightenment and progress 
under the Union Jack. But the heartiest applause in- 
variably greets the announcement that the North Bor- 
neo Company has declared a dividend. Whence the 
money to pay the dividend was derived is tactfully left 
unsaid. The dinner always concludes with the singing 
of the anthem Land of Hope and Glory. Yet they say 
that the English have no sense of humor 1 



CHAPTER IV 

THE EMERALDS OF WILHELMINA 

In Singapore stands one of the most significant 
statues in the world. From the centre of its sun- 
scorched Esplanade rises the bronze figure of a youth- 
ful, slender, clean-cut, keen-eyed man, clad in the high- 
collared coat and knee-breeches of a century ago, who, 
from his lofty pedestal, peers southward, beyond the 
shipping in the busy harbor, beyond the palm-fringed 
straits, toward those mysterious, alluring islands which 
ring the Java Sea. Though his name, Thomas Stam- 
ford Raffles, doubtless holds for you but scanty mean- 
ing, and though he died when only forty-five, his last 
years shadowed by the ingratitude of the country whose 
commercial supremacy in the East he had secured and 
to which he had offered a vast, new field for colonial 
expansion, he was one of the greatest architects of 
empire that ever lived. He combined the vision and 
administrative genius of Clive and Hastings with the 
audacity and energy of Hawkins and Drake. It was 
his dream, to use his own words, "to make Java the 
center of an Eastern insular empire" ruled "not only 
without fear but without reproach" ; an empire to con- 
sist of that great archipelago — Sumatra, Java, Borneo, 
the Celebes, New Guinea, and the lesser islands — 

74 



THE EMERALDS OF WILHELMINA 75 

which sweeps southward and eastward from the Asian 
mainland to the edges of Australasia. Though this 
splendid colonial structure was erected according to 
the plans that Raffles drew, by curious circumstance 
the flag that flies over it today is not his flag, not the 
flag of England, for, instead of being governed from 
Westminster, as he had dreamed, it is governed from 
The Hague, the ruler of its fifty million brown inhabi- 
tants being the stout, rosy-cheeked young woman who 
dwells in the Palace of Het Loo. 

Though in area Queen Wilhelmina's colonial pos- 
sessions are exceeded by those of Britain and France, 
she is the sovereign of the second largest colonial em- 
pire, in point of population, in the world. But, be- 
cause it lies beyond the beaten paths of tourist travel, 
because it has been so little advertised by plagues and 
famines and rebellions, and because it has been so ad- 
mirably and unobtrusively governed, it has largely es- 
caped public attention — a fact, I imagine, with which 
the Dutch are not ill-pleased. Did you realize, I won- 
der, that the Insulinde, as Netherlands India is some- 
times called, is as large, or very nearly as large, as all 
that portion of the United States lying east of the Mis- 
sissippi ? Did you know that in the third largest island 
of the archipelago, Sumatra, the State of California 
could be set down and still leave a comfortable margin 
all around? Or that the fugitive from justice who 
turns the prow of his canoe westward from New 
Guinea must sail as far as from Vancouver to Yoke- 



76 STRANGi: IRAIT.S 

hama before he finds himself beyond the shadow of the 
Dutch flno; and the arm of Dutch law? 

L'ntil the closing years of the sixteenth century, 
European trade with the Far East was an absolute 
monopoly in the hands of Spain and Portugal. In- 
credible as it may seem, the two Iberian nations alone 
possessed the secret of the routes to the Ii.ast, which 
they guarded with jealous care. In 1492, Columbus, 
bearing a letter from the King of Spain to the Khan of 
Tartary, whose power and wealth had become legend- 
ary in Europe through the tales of Marco Polo anti 
other overland travelers, sailed westward from Cadiz 
in search of Asia, discovering the islands which came 
to be known as the West Indies. Five years later a 
Portuguese sea-adventurer, Vasco da Gama, turned 
the prow of his caravel soutli from the mouth of the 
Tagus, skirted the coast of Africa, rounded the Cape 
of Good Hope, crossed the Indian Ocean, and dropped 
his anchor in the harbor of Calicut — the first European 
to reach the beckoning East by sea. For a quarter of a 
century the Portuguese were the only people in Europe 
who knew the way to the h'ast, and their secret gave 
them a monopoly of the Eastern trade. Lisbon be- 
came the richest port of Europe. Portugal was mis- 
tress of the seas. But in 1510 anotlier Portuguese 
seafarer, Hernando de Maghallanes — we call him 
Ferdinand Magellan — who, resenting his treatment by 
the King of Portgual, had shifted his allegiance to 
Spain, sailed southwestward across the Atlantic, 
rounded the southern extremity of America by the 



THE j<:jvii':ralds of WIIJIKLMINA 77 

straits which bear his name, crossed the unknown Pa- 
cific, and raised the (lap; of Spain over the islands which 
came in time to be called the Philippines. Spain had 
reached the Indies by sailin}^ west, as Portugal had 
reached them by sailing east. 

Though the fabulous wealth of the lands thus dis- 
covered was discussed around every council table and 
camp-fire in l*lurope, the routes by which that wealth 
might be attained were guarded by Portugal and Spain 
as secrets of state. The charts showing the routes 
were not intrusted to the captains of vessels in the 
Eastern trade until the moment of departure, and they 
were taken up immediately upon their return; the 
silence of officers and crews was insured by every oath 
that the church could frame and every penalty that the 
state could devise. For more than three-quarters of a 
century, indeed, the two Iberian nations succeeded in 
keeping the secret of the sea roads to the East, its 
betrayal being punishable by death. In 1580, how- 
ever, the J*',nglish freebooter, Francis Drake, nick- 
named "The Master 'i'hief of the Unknown World," 
duplicated the voyage of Magellan's expedition of 
threescore years before, thus discovering the route to 
the Indies used by Spain. 

At this period the Dutch, "the waggoners of the 
sea," possessed, as middlemen, a large interest in the 
spice trade, for the Portuguese, having no direct access 
to the markets of northern I^urope, had made a prac- 
tise of sending their Eastern merchandise to the 
Netherlands in Dutch bottoms for distribution by way 



78 STRANGE TRAILS 

of the Rhine and the Scheldt. As a result, the enor- 
mous carrying trade of Holland was wholly depend- 
ent upon Lisbon. But when Spain unceremoniously 
annexed Portugal In 1580, the first act of Philip, upon 
becoming master of Lisbon, was to close the Tagus to 
the Dutch, his one-time subjects, who had revolted 
eight years before. As a result of the revenge thus 
taken by the Spanish tyrant, the Dutch were faced by 
the necessity of themselves going in quest of the Indies 
If their flag was not to disappear from the seas. Their 
opportunity came a dozen years later when a venture- 
some Hollander, Cornelius Houtman, who was risking 
imprisonment and even death by trading surrepti- 
tiously in the forbidden city on the Tagus, succeeded 
in obtaining through bribery a copy of one of the secret 
charts. The Spanish authorities scarcely could have 
been aware that he had learned a secret of such im- 
mense Importance, or his silence would have been 
insured by the headsman. As It was, he was thrown 
into prison for Illegal trading, where he was held for 
heavy ransom. But he managed to get word to Am- 
sterdam of the priceless information which had come 
Into his possession, whereupon the merchants of that 
city promptly formed a syndicate, subscribed the 
money for his ransom, and obtained his release. Thus 
it came about that shortly after his return to Holland 
there was organized the Company of Distant Lands, 
a title as vague, grandiose and alluring as the plans 
of those who founded it. In 1595, then, nearly a 
century after da Gama had shown the way, four cara- 



THE EMERALDS OF WILHELMINA 79 

vels under the command of Houtman, the banner of 
the Netherlands flaunting from their towering sterns, 
sailed grandly out of the Texel, slipped past the white 
chalk cliffs of Dover, sped southward before the 
trades, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and laid 
their course across the Indian Ocean for the Spice 
Islands. When the adventurers returned, two years 
later, they brought back tales of islands richer than 
anything of which the Dutch burghers had ever 
dreamed, and produced cargoes of Eastern merchan- 
dise to back their stories up. 

The return of Houtman's expedition was the signal 
for a great outburst of commercial enterprise in the 
Low Countries, seekers after fortune or adventure 
flocking to the Indies as, centuries later, other fortune- 
seekers, other adventurers, flocked to the gold-diggings 
of the Sierras, the Yukon, and the Rand. On those 
distant seas, however, the adventurers were beyond 
the reach of any law, the same lawless conditions pre- 
vailing in the Indies at the beginning of the seven- 
teenth century which characterized Californian life in 
the days of '49. The Dutch warred on the natives 
and on the Portuguese, and, when there was no one 
else to offer them resistance, they fought among them- 
selves. By 1602 conditions had become so intolerable 
that the government of Holland, in order to tran- 
quillize the Indies, and to stabilize the spice market 
at home, decided to amalgamate the various trading 
enterprises into one gr'eat corporation, the Dutch East 
India Company, which was authorized to exercise the 



8o STRANGE TRAILS 

functions of government In those remote seas and to 
prosecute the war against Spain. When Philip shut 
the Dutch out of Lisbon, he made a formidable enemy 
for himself, for, though the burghers went to the East 
primarily In order to save their commerce from extinc- 
tion, they were animated In a scarcely less degree by a 
determination to even their score with Spain. 

The history of the Dutch East India Company Is 
not a savory one. It was a powerful instrument for 
extracting the wealth of the Indies, and, so long as 
the wealth was forthcoming, the stockholders at home 
in Holland did not inquire too closely as to how the 
Instrument was used. The story of the company from 
its formation in 1602 until its dissolution nearly two 
centuries later is a record of Intrigue, cruelty and 
oppression. It exercised virtually sovereign powers. 
It made and enforced Its own laws, it maintained its 
own fleet and army. It negotiated treaties with Japan 
and China, It dethroned sultans and rajahs. It estab- 
lished trading-posts and factories at the Cape of Good 
Hope, In the Persian Gulf, on the coasts of Malabar 
and Coromandel, and In Bengal; It waged war against 
the Portuguese, the Spaniards and the English In turn. 
When at the summit of its power. In 1669, the com- 
pany possessed forty warships and one hundred and 
fifty merchantmen, maintained an army of ten thou- 
sand men, and paid a forty per cent dividend. 

Meanwhile a formidable rival to the Dutch com- 
pany, the English East India Company, had arisen, 
but the accession of a Dutchman, William, Prince o£ 



THE EMERALDS OF WILHELMINA 8i 

Orange, to the throne of England in 1688 turned the 
rivals into allies, the trade of the eastern seas being 
divided between them. But toward the close of the 
eighteenth century there came another change in the 
status quo, for the Dutch, by allying themselves with 
the French, became the enemies of England. By this 
time Great Britain had become the greatest sea power 
in the world, so that within a few months after the 
outbreak of hostilities in 1795 the British flag had 
replaced that of the Netherlands over Ceylon, Ma- 
lacca, and other stations on the highway to the Insu- 
linde. When the Netherlands were annexed to the 
French Empire by Napoleon in 18 10 the British 
seized the excuse thus provided to occupy Java, 
Thomas Stamford Raffles, the brilliant young English- 
man who was then the agent of the British East India 
Company at Malacca, in the Malay States, being sent 
to Java as lieutenant-governor. Urgent as were his 
appeals that Java should be retained by Britain as a 
jewel in her crown of empire, the readjustment of the 
territories of the great European powers which was 
effected at the Congress of Vienna, in 18 16, after the 
fall of Napoleon, resulted in the restoration to the 
Dutch of those islands of the Insulinde, including Java, 
which the British had seized. But, though Raffles 
ruled in Java for barely four and a half years, his 
spirit goes marching on, the system of colonial govern- 
ment which he instituted having been continued by the 
Dutch, in its main outlines, to this day. He won the 
confidence and friendship of the powerful native 



82 STRANGE TRAILS 

princes, revolutionized the entire legal system, revived 
the system of village or communal government, re- 
formed the land-tenure, abolished the abominable sys- 
tem of forcing the natives to deliver all their crops, 
and gave to the Javanese a rule of honesty, justice and 
wisdom with which, up to that time, they had not had 
even a bowing acquaintance. As a result of the les- 
sons learned from Stamford Raffles, the Dutch pos- 
sessions in the East are today more wisely and justly 
administered than those of any other European nation. 
The Dutch had not seen the last of Raffles, how- 
ever, for in 1 8 17 he returned from England, where 
he had been knighted by the Prince Regent, to take 
the post of lieutenant-governor of Sumatra, to which 
the British did not finally relinquish their claims until 
half a century later. His administration of that great 
island was characterized by the same breadth of vision, 
tact, and energy which had marked his rule in Java. 
It was during this period that Raffles rendered his 
greatest service to the empire. The Dutch, upon re- 
gaining Java, attempted to obtain complete control of 
all the islands of the archipelago, which would have 
resulted in seriously hampering, if not actually ending, 
British trade east of Malacca. But Raffles, recogniz- 
ing the menace to British interests, defeated the Dutch 
scheme in January, 18 19, by a sudden coup d'etat, 
when he seized the little island at the tip of the Malay 
Peninsula which commands the Malacca Straits and 
the entrance to the China seas, and founded Singa- 
pore, thereby giving Britain control of the gateway 



THE EMERALDS OF WILHELMINA 83 

to the Farther East and ending forever the Dutch 
dream of making of those waters a mare clausum — a 
Dutch lake. 

The thousands of Islands, Islets, and atolls which 
comprise Netherlands India — the proper etymological 
name of the archipelago is Austronesia — are scat- 
tered over forty-six degrees of longitude, on both sides 
of the equator. Although in point of area Java holds 
only fifth place, Sumatra, Borneo, New Guinea and 
the Celebes being much larger, it nevertheless contains 
three-fourths of the population and yields four-fifths 
of the produce of the entire archipelago. Though 
scarcely larger than Cuba, it has more inhabitants than 
all the Atlantic Coast States, from Maine to Florida, 
combined. This, added to the strategic importance of 
its situation, the richness of its soil, the variety of its 
products, the Intelligence, activity and civilization of 
its inhabitants, and the fact that it Is the seat of the 
colonial government, makes Java by far the most 
important unit of the Insulinde. Because of Its over- 
whelming importance In the matters of position, prod- 
ucts and population, it Is administered as a distinct 
political entity, the other portions of the Dutch Indies 
being officially designated as the Outposts or the Outer 
Possessions. 

Westernmost and by far the most important of the 
Outposts is Sumatra, an island four-fifths the size of 
France, as potentially rich in mineral and agricultural 
wealth as Java, but with a sparse and intractable popu- 
lation, certain of the tribes, notably the Achinese, who 



84 STRANGE TRAILS 

Inhabit the northern districts, still defying Dutch rule 
In spite of the long and costly series of wars which 
have resulted from Holland's attempt to subjugate 
them. The unmapped Interior of Sumatra affords an 
almost virgin field for the explorer, the sportsman and 
the scientist. It has ninety volcanoes, twelve of which 
are active (the world has not forgotten the eruption. 
In 1883, of Krakatu, an island volcano off the Su- 
matran coast, which resulted in the loss of forty 
thousand human lives) ; the jungles of the Interior are 
roamed by elephants, tigers, rhinoceroses, panthers 
and occasional orang-utans, while in the scattered vil- 
lages, with their straw-thatched, highly decorated 
houses, dwell barbarous brown men practising customs 
so Incredibly eerie and fantastic that a sober narration 
of them Is more likely than not to be greeted with a 
shrug of amused disbelief. One who has no first- 
hand knowledge of the Sumatran tribes finds it dif- 
ficult to accept at their face value the accounts of the 
customs practised by the Bataks of Tapanuli, for ex- 
ample, who, when their relatives become too old and 
Infirm to be of further use, give them a pious inter- 
ment by eating them. When the local Doctor Osiers 
have decided that a man has reached the age when 
his place at the family table is preferable to his com- 
pany, the aged victim climbs a lemon-tree, beneath 
which his relatives stand In a circle, wailing the death- 
song, the weird, monotonous chant being continued 
until the condemned one summons the courage to 
throw himself to the ground, whereupon the members 



THE EMERALDS OF WILHELMINA 85 

of his family promptly despatch him with clubs, cut 
up his body, roast the meat, and eat it. Thus every 
stomach in the tribe bec6mes, in effect, a sort of family 
burial-plot. I was unable to ascertain why the victim 
is compelled to throw himself from a lemon-tree. It 
struck me that some taller tree, like a palm, would 
better accomplish the desired result. A matter of cus- 
tom, doubtless. Perhaps that explains why we dub 
persons who are passe "lemons." Then there are 
the Achinese, whose women frequently marry when 
eight years old, and are considered as well along 
in life when they reach their teens; and the Niassais, 
who are in deadly fear of albino children and who 
kill all twins as soon as they are born. Or the Me- 
nangkabaus, whose tribal government is a matriarchy: 
lands, houses, crops and children belonging solely to 
the wife, who may, and sometimes does, sell her hus- 
band as a slave in order to pay her debts. 

Trailing from the eastern end of Java In a twelve- 
hundred-mile-long chain, like the wisps of paper which 
form the tail of a kite, and separated by straits so nar- 
row that artillery can fire across them, are the Lesser 
Sundas — Bali, noted for its superb scenery and its 
alluring women; Lombok, the northernmost island 
whose flora and fauna are Australian; Sumbawa, 
where the sandalwood comes from; Flores, whose in- 
habitants consider the earth so holy that they will not 
desecrate it by digging wells or cultivation; Timor, 
the northeastern half of which, together with Goa in 
India and Macao In China, forms the last remnant of 



86 STRANGE TRAILS 

Portugal's once enormous Eastern empire; Rotti, Kei, 
and Aroo, the great chain thus formed linking New 
Guinea, the largest island in the world, barring Aus- 
tralia, with the mainland of Asia. Of the last-named 
island, the entire western half belongs to Holland, the 
remaining half being about equally divided between 
British Papua, in the southeast, and in the northeast 
the former German colony of Kaiser Wilhelm Land, 
now administered by Australia under a mandate from 
the League of Nations. 

The population of Dutch New Guinea is estimated 
at a quarter of a million, but the predilection of its 
puff-ball-headed inhabitants for human flesh has dis- 
couraged the Dutch census-takers from making an 
accurate enumeration, as the Papuan cannibal does not 
hesitate to sacrifice the needs of science to those of the 
cooking-pot. Though New Guinea is believed to be 
enormously rich in natural resources, and has many 
excellent harbors, the secrets of its mysterious interior 
can only be conjectured. The natives are as degraded 
as any in the world; their principal vocation is hunting 
birds of paradise, whose plumes command high prices 
in the European markets; their chief avocation in re- 
cent years has been staging imitation cannibal feasts 
for the benefit of motion-picture expeditions. But, 
unknown and unproductive as it is at present, I would 
stake my life that New Guinea will be a great colony 
some day. 

To the west of New Guinea and to the south of 
the Philippines lie the Moluccas — Ceram, Amboin, 



THE EMERALDS OF WILHELMINA 87 

Ternate, Halmahera, and the rest — the Spice Islands 
of the old-time voyagers, the scented tropic isles of 
which Camoens sang. Amboin, owing to the fact that 
Europeans have been established there for centuries on 
account of its trade in spices, is characterized by a 
much higher degree of civilization than the rest of 
the Moluccas, a considerable proportion of its in- 
habitants professing to be Christians. The flower of 
the colonial army is recruited from the Amboinese, 
who regard themselves not as vassals of the Dutch 
but as their allies and equals, a distinction which they 
emphasize by wearing shoes, all other native troops 
going barefoot. Beyond the Moluccas, across the 
Banda Sea, sprawls the Celebes,* familiar from our 
school-days because of its fantastic outline, the plural 
form of Its name being due to the supposition of the 
early explorers that it was a group of islands instead 
of one. And finally, crossing Makassar Straits, we 
come to Borneo, the habitat of the head-hunter and 
the orang-utan. Though Borneo is a treasure-house 
for the naturalist, the botanist, and the ethnologist, the 
Dutch, as in New Guinea, have merely scratched Its 
surface, almost no attempt having thus far been made 
to exploit its enormous natural resources. Thus I 
have arrayed for your cursory inspection the con- 
geries of curious and colorful islands which constitute 
Netherlands India in order that you may comprehend 
the problems of civilization and administration which 

* Pronounced as though it were spelled Cel-lay-bees, with the 
accent on the second syllable. 



88 STRANGE TRAILS 

Holland has had to solve In those distant seas, and 
that you may be better qualified to judge the results 
she has achieved. 

The Insulinde has eight times the population and 
sixty times the area of the mother country, from which 
it is separated by ten thousand miles of sea, yet the 
sovereignty of Queen Wilhelmina is upheld among 
the cannibals of New Guinea, the head-hunters of Bor- 
neo, and the savages of Achin, no less than among 
the docile millions of Java, by less than ten thousand 
European soldiers. That a territory so vast and with 
so enormous a population, should be so admirably 
administered, everything considered, by so small a 
number of white men, Is in itself proof of the Dutch 
genius for ruling subject races. 

From the day when Holland determined to organize 
her colonial empire for the benefit of the natives them- 
selves. Instead of exploiting It for the benefit of a 
handful of Dutch traders and settlers, as she had 
previously done, she has employed In her colonial 
service only thoroughly trained officials of proved 
ability and Irreproachable character. The Dutch of- 
ficials whom I met In Java and the Outposts impressed 
me, indeed, as being men of altogether exceptional 
capacity and attainments, better educated and quali- 
fied, as a whole, than those whom I have encountered 
in the British and French colonial possessions. Since 
the war, owing to the difficulty of obtaining men of 
sufficient caliber and experience to fill the minor posts, 



THE EMERALDS OF WILHELMINA 89 

which are not particularly well paid, Holland has given 
employment in her colonial service to a considerable 
number of Germans, most of whom had been trained 
in colonial administration in Germany's African and 
Pacific possessions, but they are appointed, of course, 
only to posts of relative unimportance. 

Every year the Minister of the Colonies ascertains 
the number of vacancies in the East Indian service, 
and every year the Grand Examination of Officials is 
held simultaneously in The Hague and Batavia, the 
results of this examination determining the eligibility 
of candidates for admission to the colonial service and 
the fitness of officials already in the service for pro- 
motion. With the exception of the Governor-General 
and two or three other high officials, who are ap- 
pointed by the crown, no official can evade this exami- 
nation, to pass which requires not only an intimate 
knowledge of East Indian languages, politics and cus- 
toms, but real scholarship as well. The names of those 
candidates who pass this examination are certified to 
the Minister of the Colonies, who thereupon directs 
them to report to the Governor-General at Batavia 
and provides them with funds for the voyage. Upon 
their arrival in the Indies the Governor-General ap- 
points them to the grade of controleur and tests their 
capacity by sending them to difficult and trying posts 
In Sumatra, Borneo, the Celebes, or New Guinea, 
where they must conclusively prove their ability before 
they can hope for promotion to the grades of assistant 
resident and resident, and the relative comfort of of- 



90 STRANGE TRAILS 

ficial life In Java. In the Outposts they at once come 
face to face with innumerable difficulties and respon- 
sibilities, for the controleur is responsible, though 
within narrower limits than the resident, for every- 
thing: justice, police, agriculture, education, public 
works, the protection of the natives, and the require- 
ments of the settlers in such matters as labor and 
irrigation. He is, in short, an administrator, a police 
official, a judge, a diplomatist, and an adviser on al- 
most every subject connected with the government of 
tropical dependencies. The officials in the Outposts 
are given more authority and greater latitude of action 
than their colleagues in Java, for they have greater 
difficulties to cope with, while the intractability, if not 
the open hostility of the natives whom they are called 
upon to rule demands greater tact and diplomacy than 
are required in Java, where the officials are inclined to 
become spoiled by their easy-going life and the semi- 
royal state which they maintain. 

Though Holland demands much of those who up- 
hold her authority in the Indies, she is generous in her 
rewards. The Governor-General draws a salary of 
seventy thousand dollars together with liberal allow- 
ances for entertaining, and is provided with palaces 
at Batavia and Buitenzorg, while at Tjipanas, on one 
of the spurs of the Gedei, nearly six thousand feet 
above the sea, he has a country house set in a great 
English park. Wherever he is in residence he main- 
tains a degree of state scarcely inferior to that of the 
sovereign herself. The residents are paid from five 



THE EMERALDS OF WILHELMINA 91 

thousand dollars to nine thousand dollars according to 
their grades, the assistant residents from three thou- 
sand five hundred dollars to five thousand dollars, and 
the controleurs from one thousand eight hundred dol- 
lars to two thousand four hundred dollars. Though 
officials are permitted leaves of absence only once in 
ten years, those who complete twenty-five years' serv- 
ice in the Insulinde may retire on half-pay. Even at 
such salaries, however, and in a land where living is 
cheap as compared with Europe, it is almost impossible 
for the officials to save money, for they are expected 
to entertain lavishly and to live in a fashion which 
will Impress the natives, who would be quick to seize 
on any evidence of economy as a sign of weakness. 

Netherlands India is ruled by a dual system of 
administration — European and native. By miracles of 
patience, tact, and diplomacy, the Dutch have suc- 
ceeded in building up in the Indies a gigantic colonial 
empire, which, however, they could not hope to hold 
by force were there to be a concerted rising of the 
natives. ' Realizing this, Holland — instead of attempt- 
ing to overawe the natives by a display of military 
strength, as England has done in Egypt and India, and 
France in Algeria and Morocco — has succeeded, by 
keeping the native princes on their thrones and accord- 
ing them a shadowy suzerainty, in hoodwinking the 
ignorant brown mass of the people into the belief that 
they are still governed by their own rulers. Though 
at first the princes, as was to be expected, bitterly 
resented the curtailment of their prerogatives and 



92 STRANGE TRAILS 

powers, they decided that they might better remain 
on their thrones, even though the powers remaining 
to them were merely nominal, and accept the titles, 
honors and generous pensions which the Dutch offered 
them, than to resist and be ruthlessly crushed. In 
pursuance of this shrewd policy, every province in the 
Indies has as its nominal head a native puppet ruler, 
known as a regent, usually a member of the house 
which reigned in that particular territory before the 
white man came. Though the regents are appointed, 
paid, and at need dismissed by the government, and 
though they are obliged to accept the advice and obey 
the orders of the Dutch residents, they remain the 
highest personages in the native world and the inter- 
mediaries through whom Holland transmits her wishes 
and orders to the native population. 

In order to lend color to the fiction that the natives 
are still ruled by their own princes, the regents are 
provided with the means to keep up a considerable de- 
gree of ceremony and pomp; they have their opera- 
bouffe courts, their gorgeously uniformed body-guards, 
their gilded carriages and golden parasols, and some of 
the more important ones maintain enormous house- 
holds. But, though they preside at assemblies, sign de- 
crees, and possess all the other external attributes of 
power, in reality they only go through the motions of 
governing, for always behind their gorgeous thrones 
sits a shrewd and silent Dutchman who pulls the 
strings. Though this system of dual government has 
the obvious disadvantage of being both cumbersome 



THE EMERALDS OF WILHELMINA 93 

and expensive, it is, everything considered, perhaps the 
best that could have been devised to meet the existing 
conditions, for nothing is more certain than that, 
should the Dutch attempt to do away with the native 
princes, there would be a revolt which would shake the 
Insulinde to its foundations and would gravely imperil 
Dutch domination in the islands. 

The most interesting examples of this system of 
dual administration are found in the Vorstenlanden, or 
"Lands of the Princes," of Surakarta and Djokja- 
karta, in Middle Java. These two principalities, 
which once comprised the great empire of Mataram, 
are nominally independent, being ostensibly ruled by 
their own princes : the Susuhunan of Surakarta and the 
Sultan of Djokjakarta, who are, however, despite their 
high-sounding titles and their dazzling courts, but 
mouthpieces for the Dutch residents. The series of 
episodes which culminated in the Dutch acquiring com- 
plete political ascendency in the Vorstenlanden form 
one of the most picturesque and significant chapters 
in the history of Dutch rule in the East. Until the 
last century these territories were undivided, forming 
the kingdom of the Susuhunan of Surakarta, who, 
being threatened by a revolt of the Chinese who had 
settled in his dominions, called in the Dutch to aid 
him in suppressing it. They came promptly, helped 
to crush the rebellion, and so completely won the con- 
fidence of the Susuhunan that he begged their arbitra- 
tion in a dispute with one of his brothers, who had 
launched an insurrection in an attempt to place himself 



94 STRANGE TRAILS 

on the throne. Certain historians assert, and prob- 
ably with truth, that this insurrection was instigated 
and encouraged by the Dutch themselves, who foresaw 
that it would be easier to subjugate two weak states 
than a single strong one. In pursuance of this policy, 
they suggested that, in order to avoid a fratricidal and 
bloody war, the kingdom be divided, two-thirds of it, 
with Surakarta as the capital, to remain under the rule 
of the Susuhunan; the remaining third to be handed 
over to the pretender, who would assume the title of 
Sultan and establish his court at Djokjakarta. This 
settlement was reluctantly accepted by the Susuhunan 
because he realized that he could hope for nothing 
better and by his brother because he recognized that 
he might do much worse. 

In principle, at least, the Sultan remained the vassal 
of the Susuhunan, in token of which he paid him public 
homage once each year at Ngawen, near Djokjakarta, 
where, in the presence of an immense concourse of 
natives, he was obliged to prostrate himself before the 
Susuhunan's throne as a public acknowledgment of his 
vassalage. But as the years passed the breach thus 
created between the Susuhunan and the Sultan showed 
signs of healing, which was the last thing desired by 
the Dutch, who believed in the maxim Divide ut 
imperes. So, before the next ceremony of homage 
came around, they sent for the Sultan, pointed out to 
him the humiliation which he incurred in kneeling be- 
fore the Susuhunan, and offered to provide him with 
a means of escaping this abasement. Their offer was 



THE EMERALDS OF WILHELMINA 95 

as simple as it was ingenious — permission to wear the 
uniform of a Dutch official. This was by no means 
as empty an honor as it seemed, as the Sultan was 
quick to recognize, for one of the tenets of Holland's 
rule in the Indies is that no one who wears the Dutch 
uniform, whether European or native, shall impair the 
prestige of that uniform by kneeling in homage. The 
Sultan, needless to say, eagerly seized the opportunity 
thus offered, and, when the date for the next ceremony 
fell due he arrived at Ngawen arrayed in the blue and 
gold panoply of a Dutch official, but, instead of pros- 
trating himself before the Susuhunan in the grovelling 
dodok, he coolly remained seated, as befitted a Dutch 
official and an independent prince. 

The animosity thus ingeniously revived between the 
princely houses lasted for many years, which was ex- 
actly what the Dutch had foreseen. But, though the 
Susuhunan and the Sultan had been goaded into hating 
each other with true Oriental fervor, they hated the 
Dutch even more. In order to divert this hostility 
toward themselves into safer channels, the Dutch 
evolved still another scheme, which consisted in in- 
stalling at the court of the Susuhunan, as at that of the 
Sultan, a counter-irritant in the person of a rival 
prince, who, though theoretically a vassal, was in re- 
ality as independent as the titular ruler. And, as a 
final touch, the Dutch decreed that the cost of main- 
taining the elaborate establishments of these hated 
rivals must be defrayed from the privy purses of the 
Susuhunan and the Sultan. The "independent" prince 



96 STRANGE TRAILS 

at Surakarta is known as the Pangeran AdIpatI Mang- 
ku Negoro; the one at Djokjakarta as the Pangeran 
AdipatI Paku Alam. Both of these princes have re- 
ceived military educations in Holland, hold honorary 
commissions in the Dutch army, and wear the Dutch 
uniform; their handsome palaces stand in close prox- 
imity to those of the Susuhunan and the Sultan, and 
both are permitted to maintain small but well-drilled 
private armies, armed with modern weapons and or- 
ganized on European lines. The "army" of Mangku 
Negoro consists of about a thousand men, and is a 
far more efficient fighting force than the fantastically 
uniformed rabble maintained by his suzerain, the Susu- 
hunan. In certain respects this arrangement resembles 
the plan which is followed at West Point and Annap- 
olis, where, if the appointee fails to meet the entrance 
requirements, the appointment goes to an alternate, 
who has been designated with just such a contingency 
in view. Both the Susuhunan and the Sultan are per- 
fectly aware that the first sign of disloyalty to the 
r Itch on their part would result in their being 
promptly dethroned and the "independent" princes 
being appointed in their stead. So, as they like their 
jobs, which are well paid and by no means onerous 
— the Susuhunan receives an annual pension from the 
Dutch Government of some three hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars and has in addition one million dol- 
lars worth of revenues to squander each year — their 
conduct is marked by exemplary obedience and cir- 
cumspection. 



THE EMERALDS OF WILHELMINA 97 

Ever since the DIpo Negoro rebellion of 1825, 
which was caused by the insulting behavior of an in- 
competent and tactless resident toward a native prince, 
to suppress which cost Holland five years of warfare 
and the lives of fifteen thousand soldiers, the Dutch 
Government has come more and more to realize that 
most of the disaffection and revolts in their Eastern 
possessions have been directly traceable to tactlessness 
on the part of Dutch officials, who either ignored or 
were indifferent to the customs, traditions, and sus- 
ceptibilities of the natives. It is the recognition and 
application of this principle that has been primarily 
responsible for the peace, progress, and prosperity 
which, in recent years, have characterized the rule of 
Holland in the Indies. When a nation with a quarter 
the area of New York State, and less than two-thirds 
its population, with a small army and no navy worthy 
of the name, can successfully rule fifty million people 
of alien race and religion, half the world away, and 
keep them loyal and contented, that nation has, it 
seems to me, a positive genius for colonial 
administration. 

Some one has described the Dutch East Indies as a 
necklace of emeralds strung on the equator. To those 
who are familiar only with colder, less gorgeous lands, 
that simile may sound unduly fanciful, but to those 
who have seen these great, rich islands, festooned 
across four thousand miles of sea, green and scintil- 
lating under the tropic sun, the description will not 



98 STRANGE TRAILS 

appear as far-fetched as it seems. A necklace of 
emeralds I The more I ponder over that description 
the better I like it. Indeed, I think that that is what 
I will call this chapter — The Emeralds of Wilhelmina. 



CHAPTER V 

MAN-EATERS AND HEAD-HUNTERS 

There is no name between the covers of the atlas 
which so smacks of romance and adventure as Borneo. 
Show me the red-blooded boy who, when he sees that 
magic name over the wild man's cage in the circus 
sideshow or over the orang-utan's cage in the zoo, 
does not secretly long to go adventuring in the jun- 
gles of its mysterious interior. So, because there is 
still in me a good deal of the boy, thank Heaven, I 
ordered the course of the Negros laid for Samarinda, 
which, if the charts were to be believed, was the prin- 
cipal gateway to the hinterland of Eastern Borneo. 
There are no roads In Borneo, you understand, only 
narrow foot-trails through the steaming jungle, so that 
the only practicable means of penetrating the interior 
is by ascending one of the great rivers. The Koetei, 
which has its nativity somewhere in the mysterious 
Kapuas Mountains, winds its way across four hun- 
dred miles of unmapped wilderness, and, a score of 
miles below Samarinda, empties into Makassar 
Straits, answered my requirements admirably, provid- 
ing a highroad to the country of my boyish dreams. 
Though I told the others that I was going up the 
Koetei In order to see the strange tribes who dwell 

99 



100 STRANGE TRAILS 

along its upper reaches, I admitted to myself that I 
had one object in view and one alone — to see the Wild 
Man. 

Viewed from the deck of the Negros, Samarinda, 
which is the capital of the Residency of Koetei, 
was entirely satisfying. It corresponded in every re- 
spect to the mental picture which I had drawn of a 
Bornean town. It straggles for two miles or more 
along a dusty road shaded by a double row of flaming 
fire-trees. Facing on the road are a few-score miser- 
able shops kept by Chinese and Arabs and the some- 
what more pretentious buildings which house the offices 
of the European trading companies. Further out, at 
the edge of the town, are the dwellings of the Dutch 
officials and traders — comfortable-looking, one-story, 
whitewashed houses with deep verandahs, peering 
coyly out from the midst of fragrant, blazing gardens. 
The Residency, the Custom House, the Police Barracks 
and the Koetei Club can readily be distinguished by the 
Dutch flags that droop above them. The river-bank 
itself is one interminable street. Here dwells the 
brown-skinned population — Malays, Bugis, Makas- 
sars, and a sprinkling of Sea Dyaks. Sometimes the 
flimsy, cane-walled, leaf-thatched huts, perched aloft 
on bamboo stilts, stand, like flocks of storks, in clus- 
ters. Again they stray a little apart, seeking pro- 
tection from the pitiless sun beneath clumps of 
palms. Malays in short, tight jackets and long, 
tight breeches of kaleidoscopic colors were saun- 
tering along the yellow road, oblivious of the sun. 



MAN-EATERS AND HEAD-HUNTERS loi 

On the shelving beach naked brown men were mending 
their nets or pottering about their dwellings. Now 
and then I caught a glimpse of a European, cool and 
comfortable in topee and white linen. It was all 
exactly as I had expected. It was, indeed, almost too 
story-booky to be true. Here, at last, was a green and 
lovely land, unspoiled by noisy, prying tourists, where 
one could lounge the lazy days away beneath the palm- 
trees or stroll with dusky beauties on a beach silvered 
by the tropic moon. I was impatient to go ashore. 

Changing from pajamas to whites, I ordered the 
launch to the gangway and went ashore to pay my 
respects to the Resident. To leave your card on the 
local representative of Queen Wilhelmina is the first 
rule of etiquette to be observed by the foreigner travel- 
ing in the Outer Possessions. In Java, which is more 
highly civilized, it is not so necessary. Unlike the 
Latin races, the Dutch are not by nature a suspicious 
people, but political unrest is prevalent throughout 
the East, and with Bolshevists, Chinese agitators and 
other fomenters of disaffection surreptitiously at work 
among the natives, it is the part of prudence to estab- 
lish your respectability at the start. To gain a friendly 
footing with the authorities is to save yourself from 
possible annoyance later on. 

As I approached the shore the glamor lent by dis- 
tance disappeared. The river-bank, which had 
looked so alluring from the cutter's deck, proved on 
closer inspection to be as squalid as the back-yard of 
a Neapolitan tenement. It was littered with dead cats 



I02 STRANGE TRAILS 

and fowls and fish and castaway vegetables and rotten 
fruit and tin cans and greasy ashes and refuse from 
fishing nets and decaying cocoanuts by the million and 
sodden rags. This stewing garbage was strewn ankle- 
deep upon the sand or was floating on the surface of 
the river, not drifting seaward, as one would expect, 
but languidly following the tide up and down, forever 
lolling along the bank. Above this putrefying feast 
swarmed myriads of flies, their buzzing combining in 
a drone like that of an electric fan. The sun struck 
viciously down upon the yellow foreshore, its glare 
reflected by the hard-packed sands as by a sheet of 
brass; the heat-waves danced and flickered. Sending 
the launch back to the cutter, I picked my way across 
this noisome place to the shelter of the trees along the 
road. But the shade that had appeared so inviting 
from the river proved as illusory as everything else. 
Grass? There was none. The earth was baked to 
the hardness of asphalt. 

To make matters worse, I found that I had landed 
too far down the beach. The building that I had as- 
sumed was the Residency proved to be the Custom 
House. The Harbor Master, whom I encountered 
there, seized the opportunity to present me with a bill 
for a hundred guilders — something over forty dollars 
— for port dues. It seemed a high price to pay for the 
privilege of lying in the stream, a quarter-mile off- 
shore. In all the Dutch ports at which we touched I 
noted this same disposition on the part of the authori- 
ties to charge all that the traffic would bear — and then 



MAN-EATERS AND HEAD-HUNTERS 103 

some. Foreign vessels are rarely seen at Samarinda, 
and one would suppose that they would be welcomed 
accordingly, but the Dutch are a business people and 
do not permit sentiment to interfere with a chance to 
make a few honest guilders. 

The Residency, I found upon inquiry, was two miles 
away, in the outskirts of the town. And, as there are 
neither rickshaws nor carriages for hire in Samarinda, 
I was compelled to walk. It was really too hot to 
move. In five minutes my clothes were as wet as 
though I had fallen in the river. The green silk 
lining of my sun-hat crocked and ran down my face in 
emerald rivulets. When I had covered half the dis- 
tance I paused beneath a waringin tree to rest. A 
breath of breeze from the river, sighing through the 
palms, brought to my streaming cheeks a hint of cool- 
ness and to my nostrils more than a hint of the gar- 
bage broiling on the beach. Anyone who could be ro- 
mantic in Borneo must be in love. 

The Assistant Resident, Monsieur de Haan, was 
as glad to see me as a banker away from home is to see 
a copy of The Wall Street Journal. I brought him a 
whiff of that great outside world from which he was 
an exile, with whose doings he kept in touch only 
through the meager despatches in the papers brought 
by the fortnightly mail-boat from Java, or through 
occasional travelers like myself. Dutch officials in 
the Indies can obtain leave only once in ten years and 
Monsieur de Haan had not visited the mother coun- 
try for nearly a decade, so that when he learned I 



104 STRANGE TRAILS 

had recently been in Holland he was pathetically 
eager to hear the gossip of the homeland. For an 
hour I lounged in a Cantonese chair beneath the 
leisurely swinging punkah — the motive power for 
the punkah being provided by a native on the 
verandah outside, who mechanically pulled the 
cord even while he slept — and chatted of homely 
things: of a restaurant which we both knew on the 
Dam in Amsterdam, of bathing on the sands of Schev- 
iningen, of band concerts on summer evenings in the 
Haagsche Bosch. Only when his long-pent curiosity 
as to happenings in Europe had been appeased did I 
find an opportunity to mention the reasons which had 
brought me to Samarinda. I wished to go up country, 
I explained. I wanted to see the real jungle and the 
strange tribes which dwell in it; particularly I wished 
to see the head-hunters. Now in this I was fully pre- 
pared for discouragement and dissuasion, for head- 
hunters are not assets to a country; to a visitor they 
are not displayed with pride. When, in the Philip- 
pines, I wished to see the head-hunting Igorots; when 
I asked the Japanese for permission to visit the head- 
hunters of Formosa, I met only with excuses and eva- 
sions. At my taste the officials pretended to be sur- 
prised and grieved. But Monsieur de Haan, doubt- 
less because he had lived so long in the wilds that head- 
hunters were to him a commonplace, not only made 
no objection, he even offered to accompany me. 

"We can go up the Koetei on your cutter," he 
suggested. "It is navigable as far as Long Iram, two 



MAN-EATERS AND HEAD-HUNTERS 105 

hundred miles up-country, which is the farthest point 
inland that one of our garrisons is stationed. Thus 
you will be able to see the Dyak country as com- 
fortably as you could see Holland from the deck of a 
canal boat. On our way we might pay a visit to the 
Sultan of Koetei, who has a palace at Tenggaroeng. 
Though he has no real power to speak of, he exer- 
cises considerable influence among the wild tribes, of 
which he is the hereditary ruler. He's the very man 
to put you in touch with the head-hunters." 

The suggestion sounded fine. Moreover, in visit- 
ing savages as temperamental as the Dyaks, there 
would be a certain comfort in having the head of the 
government along. So, as Monsieur de Haan did not 
appear to be pressed with business, we arranged to 
start up-river the following morning. 

It was late afternoon when I returned to the 
Negros. I was completely wilted by the terrible 
humidity, and, as the river looked cool and inviting in 
the twilight, I decided to refresh my body and my 
spirits by a swim. But when I suggested to the Doc- 
tor that he join me he shook his head gloomily. 

"Nothing doing," he said. "I've been wanting to 
go in all day but the port surgeon tells me that I'd be 
committing suicide." 

"But why?" I demanded irritably, for I was ill- 
tempered from the heat. "It's perfectly clean out here 
in mid-stream and there is no danger from sharks here, 
as there was at Zamboanga and Jolo." 

By way of replying he pointed to a black object, 



io6 STRANGE TRAILS 

which I took to be a log, that was floating on the 
surface of the river, perhaps fifty yards off the cutter's 
gangway. 

"That's why," he said dryly. 

As he spoke a dugout, driven by half-a-dozen 
paddles in the hands of lusty natives, came racing down 
stream. As the canoe drew abreast of us, the paddlers 
chanting a barbaric chorus, there was a sudden swirl 
in the water and the object which I had taken for a 
log abruptly dropped out of sight. 

"A crocodile!" I ejaculated, a little shiver chasing 
itself up and down my spine. 

The Doctor nodded. 

"The river is alive with them," he said. "Man- 
eaters, too. The port surgeon told me that they get 
a native or so every day." 

"I've changed my mind about wanting a swim," I 
remarked, heading for the ship's shower-bath. 



(Dusk is settling on the great river and the palm 
fronds are gently stirring before the breeze that comes 
with nightfall on the Line. If you have nothing better 
to do, suppose you sit down beside me in a deck-chair 
and let me tell you something about these cruel and 
cunning monsters and the curious methods by which 
they are captured. Boy! Pass the cheroots and bring 
us something cold to drink.) 

Though crocodiles are found everywhere in Malay- 
sia, they attain their greatest size and ferocity in the 



MAN-EATERS AND HEAD-HUNTERS 107 

rivers of Borneo, It being no uncommon thing for them 
to attack and capsize the frail native canoes, killing 
their occupants as they flounder in the water. I sup- 
pose that the crocodile of Borneo more nearly ap- 
proaches the giant saurians of prehistoric times than 
anything alive to-day. Imagine, if you please, a crea- 
ture as large as a ship's launch, with the swiftness and 
ferocity of a man-eating shark, the cunning of a snake, 
a body so heavily armored with scales that it is impervi- 
ous to everything save the most high-powered bullets, a 
tail that is capable of knocking down an ox, and a pair 
of jaws that can cut a man in two at a single snap. How 
would you like to encounter that sort of thing when 
you were having a pleasant swim, I ask you? Com- 
pared to the crocodile of Malaysia, the Florida alli- 
gator is about as formidable as a lizard. One was 
captured while we were at Sandakan which measured 
slightly over twenty-eight feet from the end of his ugly 
snout to the tip of his vicious tail. Before you raise 
your eyebrows incredulously you might take a look at 
the accompanying photograph of this monster. Nor 
was this a record crocodile, for, shortly before our 
arrival at Samarinda, one was caught in the Koetei 
which measured ten metres, or within a few inches of 
thirty-three feet. 

The crocodile obtains its meals by the simple ex- 
pedient of lying motionless just beneath the surface of 
a pool where the natives are accustomed to bathe or 
where they go for water. The unsuspecting brown 
girl trips jauntily down to the river-bank to fill her 



io8 STRANGE TRAILS 

amphora — usually a battered Standard Oil tin. As 
she bends over the stream there comes without the 
slightest warning the lightning swish of a scaly tail, a 
scream, the crunch of monster jaws, a widening eddy, 
a scarlet stain overspreading the surface of the water 
— and there is one less inhabitant of Borneo. But in- 
stead of proceeding to devour its victim then and there, 
the crocodile carries the body up a convenient creek, 
where it has the self-control to leave it until it is suffi- 
ciently gamey to satisfy its palate. For the crocodile, 
like the hunter, does not like freshly killed meat. 
Hence, a crocodile swimming up-stream with a native 
In its mouth is by no means an uncommon sight on Bor- 
ne an rivers. 

"But it is a quick death," as an Englishman whom I 
met in Borneo philosophically observed. "They don't 
play with you as a cat plays with a mouse — they just 
hold you under the water until you are drowned." 

Yet, in spite of the hundreds who fall victim to the 
terrible jaws each year, the natives seem incapable of 
observing the slightest precautions. For superstitious 
reasons they will not disturb the crocodile until it has 
shown itself to be a man-eater. If the crocodile will 
live at peace with him the native has no wish to start 
a quarrel. But the day usually comes when a native 
who has gone down to the river fails to return. In 
America, under such circumstances, the relatives of 
the missing man would send for grappling irons and an 
undertaker. But in Borneo they summon a profes- 
sional crocodile hunter. The idea of this is not so 



MAN-EATERS AND HEAD-HUNTERS 109 

much to obtain revenge as to recover the brass orna- 
ments which the dear departed was wearing at the 
moment of his taking off, for, though human life is 
the cheapest thing there is in Borneo, brass is extremely 
dear. 

The professional crocodile hunters are usually 
Malays. One of the best known and most successful 
in Borneo is an old man who runs a ferry across the 
Barito at Bandjermasin. He has capitalized his skill 
and cunning by organizing himself into a sort of croco- 
dile liability company, as it were. Anyone may secure 
a policy in this company by paying him a weekly pre- 
mium of 2^ Dutch cents. When one of his policy 
holders is overtaken by death in the form of a pair of 
four- foot jaws the old man turns the ferry over to one 
of his children and sets out to fulfill the terms of his 
contract by capturing the offending saurian, recovering 
from its stomach the weighty bracelets, anklets and 
earrings worn by the deceased, and restoring them to 
the next of kin. In order to make good he sometimes 
has to kill a number of crocodiles, but he keeps on 
until he gets the right one. This is not as difficult as 
it sounds, for the big man-eaters usually have their 
recognized haunts in certain deep pools in the rivers, 
many of them, indeed, being known to the natives by 
name. The old ferryman at Bandjermasin has been 
so successful in the conduct of his curious avocation 
that, so the Dutch Resident assured me, he has several 
hundred policy holders who pay him their premiums 



no STRANGE TRAILS 

with punctilious regularity, thereby giving him a very 
comfortable income. 

The method pursued by the crocodile hunters of 
Borneo is as effective as it is ingenious. Their fishing 
tackle consists of a hook, which is a straight piece of 
hard wood, about the size of a twelve-inch ruler, sharp- 
ened at both ends ; a ten-foot leader, woven from the 
tough, stringy bark of the baru tree; and a single 
length of rattan or cane, fifty feet or so in length, 
which serves as a line. One end of the leader is at- 
tached to a shallow notch cut in the piece of wood, 
the other end is fastened to the rattan. With a few 
turns of cotton one end of the stick is then lightly 
bound to the leader, thus bringing the two into a 
straight line. Then comes the bait, which must be 
chosen with discrimination. Though the body of a 
dog or pig will usually answer, the morsel that most 
infallibly tempts a crocodile is the carcass of a monkey. 
But it must not be a freshly killed monkey, mind you. 
A crocodile will only swallow meat that is in an ad- 
vanced stage of decomposition, the more overpowering 
its stench the greater the likelihood of the bait being 
taken. The bait is securely lashed to the pointed 
stick, though anyone but a Malay would require a 
gas-mask to perform this part of the operation. 

Everything now being ready, the bait is suspended 
from the bough of a tree overhanging the pool which 
the crocodile is known to frequent, being so arranged 
that the carcass swings a foot or so above the surface 
of the stream at high water level, the end of the rattan 



MAN-EATERS AND HEAD-HUNTERS in 

being planted In the bank. Lured by the smell of the 
bait, which in that torrid climate quickly acquires a 
bouquet which can be detected a mile to leeward, the 
crocodile is certain sooner or later to thrust its long 
snout out of the water and snap at the odoriferous 
bundle dangling so temptingly overhead, the slack line 
offering no resistance until the bait has been swallowed 
and the brute starts to make off. Then the man-eater 
gets the surprise of its long and checkered life, for the 
planted end of the rattan holds sufficiently to snap the 
threads which bind the pointed stick to the leader. The 
stick, thus caused to resume its original position at 
right angles to the line, becomes jammed across the 
crocodile's belly, the pointed ends burying themselves 
in the tender abdominal lining. 

The next morning the hunter finds bait and tackle 
missing, but a brief search usually reveals the coils of 
rattan floating on the surface of some deep pool at 
no great distance from the spot where the bait was 
taken. At the bottom of the pool Mr. Crocodile is 
writhing in the throes of acute indigestion. Taking 
the end of the line ashore, the hunter summons assist- 
ance. A score of jubilant natives lay hold on the rat- 
tan. Then ensues a struggle that makes tarpon fishing 
as tame in comparison as catching shiners. At first the 
monster tries to resist the straining line, its tail flail- 
ing the water into foam. The great jaws close on the 
leader like a bear-trap, but the loosely braided strands 
of baru fiber slip between the pointed teeth. The 
leader holds. The natives haul at the line as sailors 



112 STRANGE TRAILS 

haul at a halliard. Soon there emerges from the 
churning waters a long and incredibly ugly snout, fol- 
lowed by a low, reptilian head, with venomous, heavy- 
lidded, scarlet eyes, a body as broad as a row-boat 
and armored with horny scales, and finally a tremen- 
dous tail, twice as long as an elephant's trunk and twice 
as powerful, that spells death for any human being 
that comes within its reach. Sometimes it happens that 
the hunters momentarily become the hunted, for the 
infuriated beast, catching sight of its enemies, may 
come at them with a rush and a bellow, but more often 
it has to be dragged to land, fighting every inch of 
the way. 

Now comes the most hazardous part of the whole 
proceeding — the securing of the monster. By means 
of a noose, deftly thrown, the great jaws are rendered 
harmless. Another noose encircles the lashing tail 
and binds it securely to a tree. The front legs are next 
lashed behind the back and the hind legs treated in 
the same fashion. Thus deprived of the support of 
its legs, the crocodile is helpless and it is safe to release 
its tail. A stout bamboo is then passed between the 
bound legs and a score of sweating natives bear the 
captive in triumph to the nearest government station, 
where the bounty is claimed. The crocodile is then 
killed, the stomach cut open and its contents examined, 
any brassware or other ornaments worn by its victim 
at the time of his demise being handed over to the 
heirs. 

The method of fishing pursued by the Dyaks of 



MAN-EATERS AND HEAD-HUNTERS 113 

Borneo is quite as curious, in its way, as their manner 
of catching crocodiles. Instead of netting the fish, or 
catching them with hook and line, they asphyxiate 
them, using for the purpose a poison obtained from 
the tuba root, known to scientists as Cocculus indicus. 
When a Dyak village is in need of food the entire 
community, men, women and children, repairs to a 
stream in which fish are known to be plentiful. Across 
the stream a sort of picket fence is erected by planting 
bamboos close together. In the center of this fence is 
a narrow opening leading into an enclosure like a 
corral, the walls of which are made in the same fash- 
ion. When this part of the preparations has been 
completed a party of natives proceeds up-stream by 
canoe for a dozen or more miles, taking with them 
a plentiful supply of tuba root. Early the next morn- 
ing the canoes are filled with water, in which the tuba 
root is beaten until the water is as white and frothy 
as soapsuds. When a sufficient quantity of this highly 
toxic liquid has thus been obtained, it is emptied into 
the stream and, after a brief wait, the canoes are again 
launched and the fishermen drift slowly down the cur- 
rent in the wake of the poison. Many of the fish are 
stupefied by the tuba and, as they rise struggling to the 
surface, are speared by the Dyaks. Other, seeking to 
escape the poisonous wave, dart down-stream and, 
when halted by the barrier, pour through the opening 
into the corral, where they are captured by the thou- 
sands. I might add that the tuba does not affect the 
flesh of the fish, which can be eaten with safety. As a 



114 STRANGE TRAILS 

means of obtaining food in wholesale quantities fishing 
with tuba is perhaps justified. As a sport it is in the 
same class with shooting duck from airplanes with ma- 
chine-guns. 

Monsieur de Haan, wearing the brass-buttoned 
white uniform and gold-laced conductor's cap which 
is the garb prescribed for Dutch colonial officials, came 
abroad the Negros shortly after breakfast. The gang- 
way was hoisted, Captain Galvez gave brisk orders 
from the bridge, there was a jangle of bells in the 
engine-room, and we were off up the Koetei, into the 
mysterious heart of Borneo. Above Samarinda the 
great river flows between solid walls of vegetation. 
The density of the Bornean jungle is indeed almost un- 
believable. It is a savage tangle of bamboos, palms, 
banyans, mangroves, and countless varieties of shrubs 
and giant ferns, the whole laced together by trailers 
and creepers. Contrary to popular belief, there is 
little color to relieve the somber monotony of dark 
brown trunks and dark green foliage. It is as gloomy 
as the nave of a cathedral at twilight. Here and there 
may be seen some vine with scarlet berries and many 
orchids swing from the higher branches like incandes- 
cent globes of colored glass. But it is usually impos- 
sible for one on the ground to see the finest blooms, 
which turn their faces to the sunlight above the canopy 
of green. Gray apes chatter in the tree-tops; strange 
tropic birds of gorgeous plumage flit from bough to 
bough, monstrous reptiles slip silently through the 



MAN-EATERS AND HEAD-HUNTERS 115 

undergrowth ; insects buzz in swarms above the putrid 
swamps; occasionally the jungle crashes beneath 
the tread of some heavy animal — a rhinoceros, per- 
haps, or a wild bull, or an orang-utan. (I might 
mention, parenthetically, that orang-utan means, in 
the Malay language, "man of the forest," while 
orang-outang, the name which we incorrectly apply to 
the great red-haired anthropoid, means "man in 
debt.") The Bornean jungle is a place of indescrib- 
able dismalness and dread, its gloom seldom dissipated 
by the sun, its awesome silence broken only by the 
stirrings of the unseen creatures which lurk underfoot 
and overhead and all around. 

The palace of the Sultan of Koetei stands in the 
edge of the jungle at a horseshoe bend in the river. 
You come on it with startling abruptness — miles and 
miles of primeval wilderness and then, quite unex- 
pectedly, a bit of civilization. In no respect does its 
exterior come up to what you would expect the palace 
of an Oriental ruler to be. It is a great barn of a place, 
two stories in height, painted a bright pink, with the 
arms of Koetei emblazoned above the entrance. It re- 
minded me of a Coney Island dance hall or one of 
the tabernacles built for Billy Sunday. 

A broad flight of white marble steps leads to a 
wide, covered terrace of the same incongruous ma- 
terial. This terrace opens directly into the great 
throne-hall, a lofty apartment of impressive propor- 
tions, though its furnishings are a bizarre mixture of 
Oriental taste and Occidental tawdriness. Its marble 



ii6 STRANGE TRAILS 

floor Is strewn with splendid rugs and tiger-skins ; hang- 
ing from the ceiling are enormous cut-glass chandeliers; 
set in the walls, on either side of the scarlet-and-gold 
throne, are life-size portraits of the present Sultan's 
father and grandfather done in glazed Delft tiles, 
which seem more appropriate for a bathroom than a 
throne-hall. From each end of the apartment scarlet- 
carpeted staircases, with gilt balustrades, lead to the 
second floor. Under one of these staircases is a sort of 
closet, with glass doors, which looks for all the world 
like a large edition of a telephone booth in an American 
hotel. The doors were sealed with strips of paper 
afiixed by means of wax wafers, but, peering through 
the glass, I could made out a large table piled high 
with trays of precious stones, ingots of virgin gold 
and silver, vessels, utensils and images of the same 
precious metals. It was the state treasure of Koetei 
and was worth, so the Resident told me, upward of a 
million dollars. 

When I was at Tenggaroeng the young Sultan, an 
anaemic-looking youth in the early twenties, had not 
yet been permitted by the Dutch authorities to ascend 
the throne, the country being ruled by his uncle, the 
Regent, an elderly, affable gentleman who, in his white 
drill suit and round white cap, was the image of a 
Chinese cook employed by a Californian friend of 
mine. Upon the formal accession of the young Sul- 
tan the seals of the treasury would be broken, I was 
told, and the treasure would be his to spend as he saw 
fit. I rather imagine, however, that the Dutch con- 



MAN-EATERS AND HEAD-HUNTERS 117 

troleur attached to his court in the capacity of adviser 
will have something to say should the youthful mon- 
arch show a disposition to squander his inheritance. 

Up-stairs we were shown through a series of apart- 
ments filled to overflowing with the loot of European 
shops — ornate brass beds, inlaid bureaus and chiffon- 
iers, toilet-sets of tortoise-shell and ivory, washbowls 
and pitchers of Sevres, Dresden and Limoges, garnish 
vases, statuettes, music-boxes, mechanical toys, models 
of all ships and engines, and a thousand other useless 
and inappropriate articles, for, when the late Sultan 
paid his periodic visits to Europe, the shopkeepers of 
Paris, Amsterdam and The Hague seized the oppor- 
tunity to unload on him, at exorbitant prices, their cost- 
liest and most unsalable wares. Opening a marquetry 
wardrobe, the Regent displayed with great pride his 
collection of uniforms and ceremonial costumes, most 
of which, the Resident told me, had been copied from 
pictures which had caught his fancy in books and maga- 
zines. That wardrobe would have delighted the heart 
of a motion-picture company's property-man, for it con- 
tained everything from a Dutch court dress, complete 
with sword and feathered hat, to a state costume of 
sky-blue broadcloth edged with white fur and trimmed 
with diamond buttons. I expressed a desire to see the 
royal crown, for I had noticed that the pictures of for- 
mer sultans, which I had seen in the throne-room, 
showed them wearing crowns of a peculiar design, strik- 
ingly similar to those worn by the Emperors of Abys- 
sinia. My request resulted in a whispered colloquy be- 



ii8 STRANGE TRAILS 

tween the Resident, the Controleur, the Regent and the 
young Sultan. After a brief discussion the Resident ex- 
plained that the Controleur kept the crown locked up in 
his safe, but that he would get it if I wished to see it. 
To the obvious relief of everyone except the young Sul- 
tan I assured them that it did not matter. He seemed 
distinctly disappointed. I imagine that he would have 
liked to have gotten his hands on it. 

Outside the palace — ^just below its windows, in fact 
— is a long, low, dirt-floored, wooden-roofed shed, 
such as American farmers build to keep their wagons 
and farm machinery under. This was the royal ceme- 
tery. Beneath it the former rulers of Koetei lie buried, 
their resting-places being marked by a most curious 
assortment of fantastically carved tombs and head- 
stones. Some of the tombs hold the ashes of men 
who sat on the throne of Koetei when it was one of the 
great kingdoms of the East, long before the coming 
of the white man. 

Lady luck was kind to me, for shortly after our ar- 
rival at Tenggaroeng a delegation of Dyaks from one 
of the tribes of the far interior appeared at the palace 
to lay some tribal dispute before the Regent for his 
adjudication. There were about a score of them, in- 
cluding a rather comely young woman, whose comeli- 
ness was somewhat marred, however, according to 
European standards at least, by the lobes of her ears 
being stretched until they touched her shoulders by the 
great weight of the brass earrings which depended 
from them. The warriors were the finest physical 



MAN-EATERS AND HEAD-HUNTERS 119 

specimens of manhood that I saw in all Malaysia — tall, 
slim, muscular, magnificently developed fellows, with 
bright, rather intelligent faces. They had the broad 
shoulders and small hips of Roman athletes and when 
the sun struck on their oiled brown skins they looked 
like the bronzes in a museum. Unlike the natives we 
had seen along the coast, whose garments made a slight 
concession to the prejudices of civilization, these chil- 
dren of the wild "wore nothing much before and rather 
less than 'arf o' that be'ind." Several of them were 
armed with the sumpitan, or blow-gun, which is the na- 
tional weapon of the Dyaks, and each of them carried 
at his waist a parang-ilang, the terrible long-bladed 
knife which the head-hunter uses to kill and decapitate 
his victims. 

Monsieur de Haan, as well as the other Dutch offi- 
cials whom I questioned on the subject, attributed the 
prevalence of head-hunting in Borneo to the vanity of 
the Dyak women. He explained that, just as Ameri- 
can girls expect candy and flowers from the young men 
who are attentive to them, so Dyak maidens expect 
freshly severed human heads. The warrior who re- 
fused to present his lady-love with such grisly evidences 
of his devotion would be rejected by her and ostracized 
by his tribe. Nor does head-hunting end with marriage, 
for the standing of both the man and his wife in the 
community depends upon the number of grinning skulls 
which swing from the ridgepole of their hut. Heads 
are to a Dyak what money is to a man in civilized 
countries — the more he has, the greater his importance. 



I20 STRANGE TRAILS 

The Controleur at Tenggaroeng assured me very ear- 
nestly that his Dyak charges were by no means fero- 
cious or bloodthirsty by nature and that they practised 
head-hunting less from pleasure than from force of cus- 
tom. But I am compelled to accept such an estimate of 
the Dyak character with reservations. From all that I 
could learn, head-hunting is a sport, like fox-hunting in 
England. Nor does it, as a rule, involve any great risk 
to the hunters, for the head-hunting raids are usually 
mere butcheries of defenceless people, the Dyaks either 
stalking their victim in the bush and killing him from 
behind, or attacking a village when the warriors are 
absent and slaughtering everyone whom they find in It 
— old, men, women, and children. The head of an 
orang-utan, by the way, is as highly prized in many 
of the Dyak tribes as that of a human being. Nor is 
this surprising, for the warrior who single-handed can 
kill one of the mighty anthropoids is deserving of the 
trophy. 

During my stay in Borneo I heard many theories ad- 
vanced in explanation of head-hunting. Some authori- 
ties claimed that it is the Dyak's way of establishing 
a reputation for prowess. Others asserted that he 
takes heads merely to gratify the vanity of his women. 
There are still others who hold the opinion that the 
Dyak believes that he inherits the courage and cun- 
ning of those he kills. In certain of the Dyak tribes the 
heads are treated with profound reverence, being 
wreathed with flowers, offered the choicest morsels of 
food, and sometimes being given a place at the table, 



MAN-EATERS AND HEAD-HUNTERS 121 

while in other tribes they are hung from the ridgepole 
and displayed as trophies of the chase. My own opin- 
ion is that, though prestige and vanity and supersti- 
tion all contribute to the prevalence of head-hunting, 
in the inherent savagery of the Dyak is found the true 
explanation of the custom. 

I have already made passing mention of that charac- 
teristic weapon of the Dyaks, the sumpitan, or, as it is 
called by foreigners, the blow-gun. The sumpitan is 
a piece of hard wood, from six to eight feet in length 
and in circumference slightly larger than the handle 
of a broom. Running through it lengthwise is a hole 
about the size of a lead-pencil. A broad spear-blade is 
usually lashed to one end of the sumpitan, like a bayo- 
net, thus providing a weapon for use at close quarters. 
The dart is made from a sliver of bamboo, or from a 
palm-frond, scraped to the size of a steel knitting- 
needle. One end of the dart is imbedded in a cork- 
shaped piece of pith which fits the hole in the sumpitan 
as a cartridge fits the bore of a rifle; the other end, 
which is of needle-sharpness, is smeared with a paste 
made from the milky sap of the upas tree dissolved in 
a juice extracted from the root of the tuba. With 
the possible exception of curare, this is the deadliest 
poison known, the slightest scratch from a dart thus 
poisoned paralyzing the respiratory center and causing 
almost instant death. The dart is expelled from the 
sumpitan by a quick, sharp exhalation of the breath. 
In fact, M. de Haan told me that among certain of 
the Dyak tribes virtually all of the men suffer from 



122 STRANGE TRAILS 

rupture as a result of the constant use of the blow- 
gun. Though I have heard those who have never 
seen the sumpitan in use sneer at it as a toy, it is, at 
short distances, one of the most accurate weapons in 
existence and, when its darts are poisoned, one of the 
deadliest. In order to show me what could be done 
with the sumpitan, the Regent stuck in the earth a 
bamboo no larger than a woman's little finger, and a 
Dyak, taking up his position at a distance of thirty 
paces which I stepped off myself, hit the almost indis- 
tinguishable mark with his darts twelve times running. 
That, as the late Colonel Cody would have put It, "is 
some shooting." 

In Borneo the use of the blow-gun is not confined to 
the Dyaks. They are also used by fishl That is to 
say, by a certain species of fish. This fish, which is re- 
markable neither in size nor color, seldom being larger 
than our domestic goldfish, is known to the natives as 
ikan sumpit (literally "fish with a sumpitan") and to 
science as Toxodes jaculator. But it is unique among 
the finny tribe in possessing the curious power, on com- 
ing to the surface, of being able to squirt from its 
mouth a tiny jet of water. This it uses with unerring 
aim against insects, such as flies, grasshoppers and 
spiders, resting on plants along the edge of the streams, 
causing them to fall into the water, where they be- 
come an easy prey to these Dyaks of the deep. It was 
lucky for us that the crocodiles were not armed with 
blow-guns I 

When Latins engage in a serious quarrel they arc 



MAN-EATERS AND HEAD-HUNTERS 123 

prone to decide it with the stiletto, or, if they belong 
to the class which subscribes to the code, they meet 
on the field of honor with rapiers or pistols; Anglo- 
Saxons are accustomed to settle their disputes in a 
court of law or with their fists; but when Dyaks be- 
come involved in a controversy which cannot be ad- 
justed by the tribal council, they have recourse to the 
s'lam ayer, or trial by water. This curious method of 
deciding disputes is conducted with great formality, 
according to the rules of an established code. For 
example, should two husky young head-hunters become 
involved in a lovers' quarrel over a village belle — the 
lobes of whose ears are probably pulled down to her 
shoulders by the weight of her brass earrings — they 
adjourn, with their seconds and their friends, to what 
might appropriately be called the pool of honor. Al- 
most any place where there are four or five feet of wa- 
ter will do. Into the bottom of the pool the seconds 
drive two stout bamboo poles, a few yards apart. The 
rivals then wade out into the water and take up their 
positions, each grasping a pole. At a signal from the 
chief who is acting as umpire they plunge beneath the 
water, each duelist keeping his nostrils closed with one 
hand while with the other he clings to the pole so as to 
keep his head below the surface. As both of them 
would drown themselves rather than acknowledge de- 
feat by coming to the surface voluntarily, at the first 
sign either of the two gives of being asphyxiated, the 
seconds, who are watching their principals closely, drag 
the rivals from the water. They are then held up by 



124 STRANGE TRAILS 

the heels, head downward, In order to drain off the 
water they have swallowed, the one who first recovers 
consciousness being declared the victor and awarded 
the hand of the lady fair. It is a quaint custom. 

As I have no desire to strain your credulity to the 
breaking-point, I will touch on only one more Dyak 
custom — the disposal of the dead. It seems a fitting 
subject with which to bring this account of the wild 
men to a close. Certain of the Dyak tribes expose 
their dead in trees, some burn them, while still others 
bury them until the flesh has disappeared, when they 
exhume the skeletons, disarticulate them, and seal the 
bones in the huge jars of Chinese porcelain which are 
a Dyak's most prized possession. Sometimes these 
burial-jars are kept in the family dwelling — a rather 
gruesome article of furniture to the European 
mind — but more often they are deposited in a 
grave-house, a small, fantastically decorated hut or 
shed which serves as a family vault. But I doubt if 
any people on the face of the globe have so weird a 
custom of disposing of their dead as the Kapuas of 
Central Borneo, who hollow out the trunk of a grow- 
ing tree and in the space thus prepared insert the corpse 
of the departed. The bark is carefully replaced over 
the opening and the tree continues to grow and flourish 
— literally a living tomb. 

Noticing that I was interested in the equipment of 
the Dyaks, the Regent of Koetei called up their chief 
and, without so much as a by-your-leave, presented me 
with his sumpitan and the quiver of poisoned darts, his 




Major Powell talking to the Regent of Koetei on the steps of the 
palace at Tenggaroeng 

From left to right: the regent. Major Powell, the prime minister, the Sultan of Koetei ("who has 
since ascended the throne j, and the Dutch resident, M. de Haan 





HHPIP 


Hf 


....... ^^, ... 


HKtH.^yHb' .J„^lkM^t^f^ ■~'iw'^3t''4Jii«. l2S 




*^Hp 


MBS?Wijj 




I 


fjHiJ 





State procession in the Kraton of the Sultan of Djokjakarta 



MAN-EATERS AND HEAD-HUNTERS 125 

wooden shield — a long, narrow buckler of some light 
wood, tastily trimmed with seventy-two tufts of human 
hair, mementoes of that number of enemies slain on 
head-hunting expeditions — a peculiar coat of mail, com- 
posed of overlapping pieces of bark, capable of turn- 
ing an arrow, and his imposing head-dress, which con- 
sisted of a cap formed from a leopard's head, with a 
sort of visor made from the beak of a hornbill, the 
whole surmounted by a bunch of yard-long tail-feathers 
from some bright-plumaged bird. When the presen- 
tation was concluded all the chieftain had left was his 
breech-clout. He did not share in my enthusiasm. 
From the murderous glance which he shot at me when 
the Regent was not looking, I judged that if he ever 
met me alone in the jungle he would get his shield back, 
with another scalp to add to his collection. And I 
could guess whose head that scalp would come from. 



CHAPTER VI 

IN BUGI LAND 

The Negros was not fast — thirteen knots was 
about the best she could do^ — so that it took us two 
days to cross from Samarinda, in Borneo, to Makas- 
sar, the capital of the Celebes. Our course took us 
within sight of "the Little Paternosters, as you come 
to the Union Bank," where, as you may remember, 
Sir Anthony Gloster, of Kipling's ballad of The Mary 
Gloster, was buried beside his wife. Before our 
hawsers had fairly been made fast to the wharf at 
Makassar it became evident that among the natives 
our arrival had created a distinct sensation. The 
wharf was crowded with Bugis, as the natives of the 
southern Celebes are known, who tried in vain to make 
themselves understood by our Filipino crew. Instead 
of the boisterous curiosity which had marked the atti- 
tude of the natives at the other ports, the Bugis ap- 
peared to be laboring under a suppressed but none the 
less evident excitement. When I went ashore to call 
on the American Consul they made way for me with a 
respect which verged on reverence. This curious atti- 
tude was explained by the Consul. 

"Your coming has revived among the natives a very 
curious and ancient legend," he told me. "When the 

126 



IN BUGI LAND 127 

Dutch established their rule In the Celebes, something 
over three centuries ago, the King of the Bugis mys- 
teriously disappeared. Whether he fled or was killed 
in battle, no one knows. In any event, from his dis- 
appearance arose a tradition that he had founded 
another kingdom in some islands far to the north, but 
that, when the time was propitious, he would return to 
free his people from foreign domination. Thus he 
came in time to be regarded as a divinity, a sort of 
Messiah. Curiously enough, the natives refer to him 
by a name which, translated Into English, means 'thd 
King of Manila.' Some months ago It was reported 
In the Makassar papers that the Governor-General of 
the Philippines expected to visit the Celebes upon his 
way to Australia, whereupon the rumor spread among 
the Bugis like wild-fire that 'the King of Manila' was 
about to return to his ancient kingdom, but the excite- 
ment gradually subsided when the Governor-General 
failed to appear. But when the Negros entered the 
harbor this morning, and it was reported that she was 
from Manila and had on board a white man who had 
some mysterious mission In the Interior of the Island, 
the excitement flamed up again. The natives, you see, 
who are as simple and credulous as children, believe 
that you are the Messiah of their legend and that you 
have come to liberate them from Dutch rule." * 

* Owing to my ignorance of Dutch and Buglnese, I was unable 
to obtain a dependable account of this curious legend, but the 
several versions which I heard agreed in the main with that given 
above. 



128 STRANGE TRAILS 

"But look here," saia I, annoyance in my tone, "this 
isn't as funny as it seems. Tying me up to this fool 
tradition may result in spoiling my plans for taking 
pictures in the Celebes. Of course the Dutch authori- 
ties know perfectly well that I haven't come here to 
start a revolution, but, on the other hand, they may 
not want a person whom the natives regard as a Mes- 
siah to go wandering about in the interior, where 
Dutch rule is none too firmly established anyway, for 
fear that my presence might be used as an excuse for 
an insurrection." 

"Don't let that worry you," the Consul reassured 
me. "I'll take you over now to call on the Governor. 
He's a good sort and he'll do everything he can to help 
you. Then I'll send the editors of the vernacular 
papers around to the Negros this afternoon to call on 
you. You can explain that you're here to get motion- 
pictures to illustrate the progress and prosperity of the 
Celebes, and It might be a good idea to tell them that 
some of your ancestors were Dutch. That will help to 
make you solid with the authorities. The interview 
will appear in the papers tomorrow and in twenty- 
four hours the news will have spread among the Bugis 
that you're not their Messiah after all." 

"But I'm not Dutch," I protested. "All my people 
were Welsh and English. The only connection I have 
with Holland Is that the house in which I was born Is 
on a street that has a Dutch name." 

"Fine!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "Born on 
Van Rensselaer street, you say? Be sure and tell 'em 



IN BUGI LAND 129 

that. That's the next best thing to having been born 
in Holland." 

"I know now," I said, "how it feels to refuse a 
throne." 

At tiffin that noon on the Negros I told the story to 
the others. "So you see," I concluded, "if I had been 
willing to take a chance, I might have been King of 
the Bugis." 

"They wouldn't have called you that at home," the 
Lovely Lady said unkindly. "There they would have 
called you the King of the Bugs." 

Nature must have created Celebes in a capricious 
moment, such a medley of bold promontories, jutting 
peninsulas, deep gulfs and curving bays does its outline 
present. Indeed, its coast line is so irregular and so 
deeply indented by the three great gulfs or bays of 
Tomini, Tolo, and Boni that it is small wonder that 
the first European explorers assumed it was a group 
of islands and gave It the name of plural form which 
still perpetuates the very natural mistake. Its length 
Is roughly about five hundred miles but its width Is 
so varying that while it is over a hundred miles across 
the northern part of the island at the middle it Is a 
scant twenty miles from coast to coast. 

Though the census of 1905 gave the population of 
the Island as less than nine hundred thousand, the latest 
official estimate places it at about three millions. The 
actual number of inhabitants Is probably midway be- 
tween these figures. But, to tell the truth, the tempera- 



130 STRANGE TRAILS 

ment of the savages who inhabit the interior is not con- 
ducive to an accurate enumeration, the Dutch census- 
takers being greeted with about the same degree of 
cordiality that the moonshiners of the Kentucky moun- 
tains extend to United States revenue agents. 

The three most important peoples of Celebes are 
the Bugis, the Makassars, and the Mandars. The 
medley of more or less savage tribes dwelling in the 
island are known as Alfuros — ^literally "wild" — which 
is the term applied by the Malays to all the uncivilized 
non-Mohammedan peoples in the eastern part of the 
archipelago. For the Bugis to refer to the tribes of 
the interior as wild is like the pot calling the kettle 
black. The Bugis, a passionate, half-savage, ex- 
tremely revengeful people, originally occupied only the 
kingdom of Boni, in the southwestern peninsula, but 
from this district they have spread over the whole of 
Celebes and have founded settlements on many of the 
adjacent islands. They are the seamen of the archi- 
pelago, the greatest navigators and the most enter- 
prising tradesmen, and were, in times gone by, the 
greatest pirates as well. In fact, the harbor master at 
Makassar told us that the crews of many of the rakish 
looking sailing craft which were anchored in close 
proximity to the Negros were reformed buccaneers. 
Certainly they looked it. They may have reformed, 
but that did not prevent Captain Galvez from doubling 
the deck-watch at night while we were in Celebes 
waters. He believed in safety first. 

The Winsome Widow had been very enthusiastic 







Some strange subjects of Queen Wilhelmina 
Native women of the interior of Dutch Borneo 



IN BUGI LAND 131 

about going to the Celebes because Makassar Is the 
greatest market in the world for those ornaments so 
dear to the feminine heart — ^bird-of-paradise plumes. I 
explained to her that it was against the law to bring 
them into the United States, but no matter, she wanted 
to buy some. To visit Makassar without buying bird- 
of-paradise plumes, she said, would be like visiting Ja- 
pan without buying a kimono. The bird is usually sold 
entire, the prices ranging from twenty-five to thirty 
dollars, according to size and condition, though, owing 
to the ruthless slaughter of the birds to meet the de- 
mands of the European market, prices are steadily ad- 
vancing. The Winsome Widow bought four of the 
finest birds I have ever seen — gorgeous, flame-colored 
things with plumes nearly two feet long. How she pro- 
posed getting them into the United States she did not 
tell me, and I thought it as well not to ask her. She 
had them carefully packed in a wooden box made for 
the purpose which she did . not open until nearly 
two months later, when we were steaming down the 
coast of Siam on a cargo boat, long after I had sent the 
Negros back to Manila. Imagine her feelings when, 
upon opening the box to feast her eyes on her contra- 
band treasures, she found it to contain nothing but 
waste paper! I suspect that the sweetheart of one of 
our Filipino cabin-boys is now wearing a hat fairly 
smothered in bird-of-paradise plumes. 

The Bugis' love of the sea has given them almost a 
monopoly of the trade around Celebes. Despite their 
fierce and warlike dispositions they are industrious and 



132 STRANGE TRAILS 

ingenious — qualities which usually do not go together; 
they practise agriculture more than the neighboring 
tribes and manufacture cotton cloth not only for their 
own use but for export. They also drive a thriving 
trade in such romantic commodities as gold dust, tor- 
toise shell, pearls, nutmegs, camphor, and bird-of- 
paradise plumes. They dwell for the most part in 
walled enclosures known as kampongs, in flimsy houses 
built of bamboo and thatched with grass or leaves. 
But as diagonal struts are not used the walls soon lean 
over from the force of the wind, giving to the villages 
a curiously inebriated appearance. In several of the 
eight petty states which comprise the confederation of 
Boni the ruler is not infrequently a woman, the female 
line having precedence over the male line in succession 
to the throne. The women rulers of the Bugis have 
invariably shown themselves as astute, capable and 
warlike as the men, the princess who ruled in Boni 
during the middle of the last century having defeated 
three powerful military expeditions which the Dutch 
sent against her. Everything considered, the Bugis 
are perhaps the most interesting race in the entire 
archipelago. 

The Bugis are said to be more predisposed toward 
"running amok" than any other Malayan people. 
Having been warned of this unpleasant idiosyncrasy, 
I took the precaution, when among them, of carrying 
in the right-hand pocket of my jacket a service auto- 
matic, loaded and ready for instant action. For when 
a Bugi runs amok he will almost certainly get you 



IN BUGI LAND 133 

unless you get him first. Running amok, I should 
explain, is the native term for the homicidal mania 
which attacks Malays. Without the slightest warn- 
ing, and apparently without reason, a Malay, armed 
with a kris or other weapon, will rush into the street 
and slash at everybody, friends and strangers alike, 
until he is killed. These frenzies were formerly re- 
garded as due to sudden insanity, but it is now believed 
that the typical amok is the result of excitement due 
to circumstances, such as domestic jealousy or gamb- 
ling losses, which render the man desperate and weary 
of life. It is, in fact, the Malay equivalent of suicide. 
Though so intimately associated with the Malay, there 
are good grounds for believing the word to have an 
Indian origin. Certainly the act is far from unknown 
in Indian history. In Malabar, for example, it was 
long the custom for the zamorin or king of Calicut to 
cut his throat in public after he had reigned twelve 
years. But In the seventeenth century there was inaug- 
urated a variation in this custom. After a great feast 
lasting for nearly a fortnight the ruler, surrounded by 
his bodyguard, had to take his seat at a national as- 
sembly, on which occasion it was lawful for anyone to 
attack him, and, if he succeeded in killing him the 
murderer himself assumed the crown. In the year 
1600, it is recorded, thirty men who would be king were 
killed while thus attempting to gain the throne^ These 
men were called Amar-khan, and it has been suggested 
that their action was "running amok" in the true sense 
of the term. From this it would appear that a king of 



134 STRANGE TRAILS 

Calicut was about as good an insurance risk as a 
president of Haiti. 

The act of running amok is probably due to causes 
over which the culprit has some measure of control, as 
the custom has now virtually died out in the Philip- 
pines and in the British possessions in Malaysia, owing 
to the drastic measures adopted by the authorities. 
Among the Mohammedans of the southern Philip- 
pines, where the custom is known as juramentado, it 
was discouraged by burying the carcass of a pig — an 
animal abhorred by all Moslems — in the grave with 
the body of the assassin. When I was in Jolo the 
governor told me of a novel and highly effective 
method which had been adopted by the officer com- 
manding the American forces in that island for dis- 
couraging the custom. A number of American sol- 
diers had been killed by Moros running amok. The 
American commander took up the matter with the 
local priests but they only shrugged their shoulders 
with true Oriental stoicism, saying that when a man 
went juramentado It was the will of Allah and that 
nothing could be done. The next day an American 
soldier, a revolver in either hand, burst into a Moro 
village, notorious for Its juramentados, firing at every- 
one whom he saw and yelling like a mad man. The ter- 
rified villagers took to the bush, where they remained 
in fear and trembling until the crazy Americano had 
taken his departure. That evening the village priests 
appeared at headquarters to complain to the American 
commander. 



IN BUGI LAND 135 

"But Americans have just as much right to go 
juramentado as the Mores," said the general. "I can 
do nothing. The man is not responsible. It is the 
will of Allah." That was the end of juramentado in 
Job. 

The wharves and godowns which line Makassar's 
water-front form an unattractive screen to a pic- 
turesque and charming town. Though, owing to its 
commercial importance as a half-way station on the 
road from Asia to Australia, Makassar promises to 
become a second Singapore, it has as yet neither an 
electric lighting, gas, nor water system. It is, however, 
very beautifully laid out, the streets, which are broad 
and well-kept, being lined by double rows of mag- 
nificent canarium trees or tamarinds, whose branches 
interlace high overhead in a canopy of green. The 
European life of Makassar centers in the great grass- 
covered ■plein, or common, where band concerts, re- 
views, horse races, festivals, and similar events are 
held. Facing on the plein is the palace of the Gover- 
nor of the Celebes, a one-story, porticoed building 
with white walls and green blinds, in the Dutch colo- 
nial style, a type of architecture which is admirably 
adapted to the tropics. Next to the palace is the 
Oranje Hotel, a well-kept and comfortable hostelry 
as hotels go in Malaysia. On its terrace the home- 
sick Europeans gather toward twilight to sip advo- 
cat — a drink which is a first cousin to the egg-nogg 



136 STRANGE TRAILS 

of pre-Volstead days, very popular In the Indies — and 
to listen to the military band playing on the plein. 

Diagonally across the plein rise the massive walls 
of Fort Rotterdam, erected by one of the native rulers, 
the King of Goa, with the assistance of the Portuguese, 
when the seventeenth century was still in its infancy 
and when the settlement on the lower end of Manhat- 
tan Island was still called Nieuw Amsterdam. The 
capture of the fort by the Dutch In 1667 signalized the 
passing of Portuguese power in Asia. Pass the sloven- 
ly native sentry at the outer gate, cross the creaking 
drawbridge, and, were It not for the tropical vegeta- 
tion and the oppressive heat, you might think yourself 
In the Low Countries Instead of a few degrees below 
the Line, for the crenelated ramparts, the shaded, 
gravelled paths, the ancient garrison church, the of- 
ficers' quarters with their steep-pitched, red-tiled roofs, 
make the interior a veritable bit of Holland, trans- 
planted to a tropic island half the world away. 

Makassar has a population of about fifty thousand, 
including something over a thousand Europeans and 
some five thousand Chinese, but as most of the natives 
live In their walled kampongs in the environs, the city 
appears much smaller than it really is. The retail 
trade is almost wholly in the hands of the Chinese, 
many of whom are men of great wealth and influ- 
ence. There was also a small colony of Japanese, 
but, as a result of the boycott which the Chinese 
had instituted against them in reprisal for Japan's 
refusal to evacuate Shantung, they were unable to 



IN BUGI LAND 137 

find markets for their wares or to obtain employ- 
ment and, in consequence, were being forced to leave 
the island. The only American in the Celebes when 
we were there was the representative of the Standard 
Oil Company — a desperately homesick youngster from 
Missouri who had been a lieutenant of aviation. He 
introduced himself to us on the terrace of the Oranje 
Hotel, begged the privilege of buying the drinks, and 
pleaded with an eagerness, that was almost pathetic 
for the latest news from God's Country. At almost 
every place of importance which we visited in Malaysia 
we found these agents of Standard Oil — alert and 
clean-cut young fellows, who, far from home and 
friends, are helping to build up a commercial empire for 
America oversea. 

The native soldiery, who form the bulk of the Ma- 
kassar garrison, are quartered, with their families, in 
long, stone barracks — ten couples to a room. For every 
soldier of the colonial forces, whether European or 
native, is permitted to keep a woman in the barracks 
with him. If she is the soldier's wife, well and good, 
but the authorities do not frown if the couple have 
omitted the formality of standing up before a clergy- 
man. The rooms in which the soldiers and their fami- 
lies live have no partitions, to each couple being as- 
signed a space about eight feet square, which is chalk- 
marked on the floor. The only article of furniture in 
each of these "apartments" is a bed, which is really a 
broad, low platform covered with a grass-mat, for in a 
land where the mercury not infrequently climbs to 1 20 



138 STRANGE TRAILS 

in the shade, there is no need for bedding. Here they 
eat and sleep and make their toilets, the women prepar- 
ing the meals for their men and for themselves in ovens 
out-of-doors. At night the beds may be separated by 
drawing the flimsiest of cotton curtains — the only con- 
cession to privacy that I could discover. As Malays 
invariably have large families, the barrack room 
usually has the appearance of a day nursery, with 
naked brown youngsters crawling everywhere, but at 
night they are disposed of in fiber hammocks which 
are slung over the parents' heads. The colonel in 
command at Fort Rotterdam told me that in the new 
type of barracks which were being built in Java each 
family would be assigned a separate room, but he 
seemed to regard such provisions for privacy as wholly 
unnecessary and a shameful waste of money. 

The military authorities not only permit, but 
encourage the Dutch soldiers to contract alliances 
of a temporary character with native women dur- 
ing their term of service in the Insulinde, with the 
idea, no doubt, of making them more contented. Dur- 
ing operations in the field the women and children, 
instead of remaining behind in barracks, accompany 
the troops almost to the firing-line, a custom which, 
apparently, does not interfere with efficiency or disci- 
pline. Indeed, there are few forces of equal size in 
the world which have seen as much active service as 
the army of Netherlands India, for in the extension of 
Dutch dominion throughout the archipelago the native 
rulers rarely have surrendered their authority without 



IN BUGI LAND 139 

fighting. Though the newspapers seldom mention it, 
Holland is almost constantly engaged in some little war 
in some remote corner of her Indian empire, in cer- 
tain districts of Sumatra, for example, fighting having 
been almost continuous these many years. 

Though the flag of Holland was first hoisted over 
the Celebes more than three centuries ago, Dutch com- 
mercial interests are still virtually confined to the four 
chief towns — Makassar, Menado, Gorontalo, and 
Tondano — and this in spite of the fact that the interior 
of the island is known to be immensely rich in natural 
resources. In the native states Dutch authority is little 
more than nominal, the repeated attempts which have 
been made to subjugate them invariably having met 
with discouragement and not infrequently with disas- 
ter. Hence the island is still without railways, though 
it is being slowly opened up by means of roads, some 
of which are practicable for motor-cars. Most of the 
roads in the Celebes were originally built by means of 
the Corvee, or forced labor, the natives being com- 
pelled to spend one month out of the twelve in road 
construction. But, though they were taken for this 
work at a season when they could best be spared from 
their fields, it was an enormous tax to impose upon an 
agricultural population, resulting in grave discontent 
and in seriously retarding the development of the 
island. For, ever since Marshal Daendels, "the Iron 
Marshal," who ruled the Indies under Napoleon, 
utilized forced labor to build the splendid eight-hun- 
dred-mile-long highway which runs from one end of 



140 STRANGE TRAILS 

Java to the other, the corvee has been a synonym for 
unspeakable cruelty and oppression throughout the 
Insulinde. Each dessa, or district, through which the 
great trans-Java highway runs was forced to construct, 
within an allotted period, a certain section of the road, 
the natives working without pay while their crops rot- 
ted in the fields and their families starved. As a final 
touch of tyranny, the grim old Marshal gave orders 
that if a dessa did not complete its section of the road 
within the allotted time the chiefs of that district were 
to be taken out and hung. 

When the Dutch determined to open up Celebes by 
the construction of a highway system they realized 
the wisdom of obtaining the cooperation of the native 
rulers. But when they outlined their scheme to the 
King of Goa, the most powerful chieftain in the south- 
ern part of the island, they encountered, if not open 
opposition, at least profound Indifference. This was 
scarcely a matter for surprise, however, for the King 
quite obviously had no use for roads, first, because when 
he had occasion to journey through his dominions he 
either rode on horseback or was carried in a palanquin 
along the narrow jungle trails ; secondly, because he was 
perfectly well aware that by aiding in the construction 
of roads he would be undermining his own power, for 
roads would mean white men. To attempt to build a 
road across Goa In the face of the King's opposition, 
would, as the Dutch realized, probably precipitate a 
native uprising, for, without his cooperation, it would 



IN BUGI LAND 141 

be necessary to make use of the corvee to obtain 
laborers. 

But the Governor of the Celebes had been trained 
in a different school from the Iron Marshal. He 
believed that with an ignorant and suspicious native, 
such as the King of Goa, tact could accomplish more 
than threats. So, instead of attempting to build the 
road by forced labor, he sent to Batavia for a fine 
European horse and a luxurious carriage, gaudily 
painted, which he presented to the King as a token 
of the government's esteem and friendship. Now the 
King of Goa, as the governor was perfectly aware, 
had about as much use for a wheeled vehicle in his 
roadless dominions as a Bedouin of the Sahara has 
for a sailboat. But the King did precisely what the 
governor anticipated that he would do : in order that 
he might display his new possession he promptly 
ordered his subjects to build him a carriage road from 
his capital to Makassar. Thus the government of the 
Celebes obtained a perfectly good highway for the 
price of a horse and carriage, and won the friendship 
of the most powerful of the native rulers into the 
bargain. After some years, however, the road began 
to fall into disrepair, but as by this time the novelty 
of the horse and carriage had worn off, the King 
took little interest In its Improvement. So the 
governor again had recourse to diplomacy to gain 
his ends, this time presenting his Goanese Majesty with 
a motor-car, gorgeous with scarlet paint and polished 
brass. And, in order that the King might be brought 



142 STRANGE TRAILS 

to realize that the roads were not in a condition con- 
ducive to comfortable motoring, a young Dutch officer 
took him for his first motor ride. That ride evidently 
jolted the memory as well as the body of the dusky 
monarch, for the next day a royal edict was issued 
summoning hundreds of natives to put the road in 
good repair. And, as the King quickly acquired a 
taste for speeding, in good repair it has remained 
ever since. 

I have related this episode not because it is in itself 
of any great Importance, but because it serves to illus- 
trate the methods used by the Dutch officials in handling 
recalcitrant or stubborn natives. Though Holland 
rules her fifty million brown subjects with an iron 
hand, she has long since learned the wisdom of wearing 
over the iron a velvet glove. 



CHAPTER VII 

DOWN TO AN ISLAND EDEN 

I WENT to Bali, which is an island two-thirds the 
size of Porto Rico, off the eastern extremity of Java, 
because I wished to see for myself if the accounts I 
had heard of the surpassing beauty of its women were 
really true. The Dutch officials whom I had met in 
Samarinda and Makassar had depicted the obscure 
little isle as a flaming, fragrant garden, overrun with 
flowers, a sort of unspoiled island Eden, where bronze- 
brown Eves with faces and figures of surpassing love- 
liness disported themselves on the long white beaches, 
or loitered the lazy days away beneath the palms. But 
I went there skeptical at heart, for, ever since I jour'- 
neyed six thousand miles to see the women for whom 
Circassia has long been undeservedly famous, I have 
listened with doubt and distrust to the tales told by 
returned travelers of the nymphs whom they had 
found, leading an Arcadian existence, on distant tropic 
isles. 

Yet I must admit that, when the anchor of the 
Negros splashed into the blue waters off Boeleleng, on 
the northern coast of the island, and a boat's crew of 
white-clad Filipinos rowed me ashore, I half expected 
to find a Balinese edition of the Ziegfeld Follies chorus 

143 



144 STRANGE TRAILS 

waiting to greet me with demonstrations of welcome 
and garlands of flowers. What I did find on the wharf 
was a surly Dutch harbor-master, who, judging from 
his breath and disposition, had been on a prolonged 
carouse. Of the women whose beauty I had heard 
chanted In so many ports, or, indeed, of a native 
Balinese of any kind, there was no sign. Barring the 
harbor-master and a handful of Chinese, Boeleleng, 
which Is a place of some size, appeared to be deserted. 
Yet, as I strolled along its waterfront, I had the un- 
comfortable feeling that I was being watched by many 
pairs of unseen eyes. 

"Where has everyone gone?" I demanded of the 
Impassive Chinese steward who served me liquid re- 
freshment at the Concordia Club. (Every town in the 
Insullnde has Its Concordia Club, just as every Swiss 
town has Its Grand Hotel.) 

"Menjepee," he answered mystically, shrugging his 
shoulders. "Evlyone stay in house." 

"Menjepee, eh?" I repeated. "Never heard of It. 
Some sort of disease, I suppose, like cholera or plague. 
If that's why everyone has run away I think that I'd 
better be leaving." 

A ghost of a smile flitted across the Celestial's 
impassive countenance. 

"No clolra. No pleg," he assured me. "Menjepee 
make by pliest." 

Before I could elucidate this curious statement there 
entered the club a young Hollander immaculate in 
pipe-clayed topee and freshly starched white linen. 



DOWN TO AN ISLAND EDEN 145 

"It's not a disease; It's a religious observance," he 
explained in perfect English, overhearing my last 
words. "They call it Menjepee, which, literally trans- 
lated, means 'silence.' The Balinese are Hindus, you 
know — about the only ones left in the Islands — and 
they observe the Hindu festivals very strictly. Their 
priests raise the very devil with them if they don't. 
During Menjepee, which lasts twenty-four hours,, no 
native Is permitted to set foot outside the wall of his 
kampong except for the most urgent reasons, and even 
then he has to get permission from his priest. If he 
Is caught outside his kampong without permission he 
Is heavily fined, to say nothing of being given the 
cold shoulder by his neighbors." 

"I was told in Samarinda," I remarked carelessly, 
by way of introducing the topic In which I was most 
interested, "that some of the native girls here In Bali 
are remarkably good looking." 

"I thought you'd be asking about them," the Hol- 
lander commented dryly. "That's usually the first 
question asked by everyone who comes to Bali. But 
you won't find them on this side of the island. If you 
want to see them you'll have to cross over to the south 
side. The prettiest girls are to be found In the vicinity 
of Den Pasar and Kloeng Kloeng." 

"So I had heard," I told him. "I am going to cross 
the island by motor and have my boat pick me up on 
the other side. How far is It to Den Pasar?" 

"Only about sixty miles and you'll have a tolerably 



146 STRANGE TRAILS 

good mountain road all the way. But you can't go 
today." 

"Why not?" 

"Menjepee," was the laconic answer. "You won't 
be able to get anyone to take you. There are only 
four or five motor cars in Boeleleng and their drivers 
are all Hindus." 

I smothered an expletive of annoyance, for my time 
was limited and the Negros had already sailed. 

"Surely you don't mean to tell me that there Is no 
way in which I can get across the island today?" I 
demanded. "This Menjepee business is as infernal a 
nuisance as a taxicab strike in New York." 

"Perhaps the Resident might be able to do some- 
thing for you," my acquaintance suggested after a 
moment's consideration. "He's a good sort and he's 
always glad to meet visitors. We don't have many of 
them here, heaven knows. Look here. I've a sado 
outside. Suppose you hop in and I'll drive you up to 
the Residency and you can ask the Resident to help 
you out." 

As we rattled in a sort of governess-cart, called 
sado, up the broad, palm-lined avenue which leads 
from Boeleleng to Singaradja, the seat of govern- 
ment, three miles away, I caught fleeting glimpses of 
natives peering at me furtively over the mud walls 
which surround their kampongs, but the instant they 
saw that they were observed they disappeared from 
view. The Resident I found to be a man of charm and 
culture who had twice crossed the United States on his 



DOWN TO AN ISLAND EDEN 147 

way to and from Holland. At first he was dubious 
whether anything could be done for me, explaining 
that Menjepee is as devoutly observed by the Hindus 
of Bali as the fasting month of Ramadan is by the 
Mohammedans of Turkey, and that the Dutch officials 
make it a rule never to interfere with the religious 
observances of the natives. He finally consented, how- 
ever, to send for the chief priest and see if he could 
persuade him, in view of my limited time, to grant a 
special dispensation to a native who could drive a car. 
I don't know what arguments he used, but they must 
have been effective, for within the hour we heard the 
honk of a motor-horn at the Residency gate. 

"We have no hotels in Bali," the Resident remarked 
as I was taking my departure, "but Til telephone over 
to the Assistant Resident at Den Pasar to have a room 
ready for you at the passangrahan — that's the govern- 
ment rest-house, you know. And I'll also send word to 
the Controleur at Kloeng Kloeng that you are coming 
and ask him to arrange some native dances for you. 
He's very keen about that sort of thing and knows 
where to get the best dancers in the island." 

"Tell me," I queried, as I was about to enter the 
car, "are these girls I've heard so much about really 
pretty?" 

The Resident smiled cynically. 

"Well," he replied, and I thought that I could de- 
tect a note of homesickness in his voice, "it depends 
upon the point of view. When you first arrive in Bali 
you swear that they are the prettiest brown-skinned 



148 STRANGE TRAILS 

women In the world. But after you have been here a 
year or so you get so tired of everything connected 
with the tropics that you don't give the best of them 
a second glance. For my part, give me a plain, whole- 
some-looking Dutch girl with a lusty figure and corn- 
colored hair and cheeks like apples in preference to 
all the cafe-au-lait beauties in Bali." 

"Au revoir," I called, as I signaled to the driver 
and the car leaped forward. "If I listen to you any 
longer I shall have no illusions left." 

Save only Its western end, which Is covered with 
dense jungle inhabited by tigers and boa-constrictors, 
Bali is a vast garden, ablaze with the most gorgeous 
flowers that you can Imagine and criss-crossed by a 
net-work of hard, white roads which alternately wind 
through huge cocoanut plantations or skirt Intermin- 
able paddy fields. From the coast the ground rises 
steadily to a ridge formed by a central range of moun- 
tains, which culminate in the imposing, cloud-wreathed 
Peak of Bali, two miles high. Streams rushing down 
from the mountains have cut the rich brown loam of 
the lowlands into deep ravines, down which the brawl- 
ing torrents make their way to the sea between high 
banks smothered In tropical vegetation. The most 
remarkable feature of the landscape, however, are the 
rice terraces, built by hand at an incredible cost of 
time and labor, which climb the slopes of the moun- 
tains, tier on tier, like the seats in a Roman ampi- 
theatre, sometimes to a height of three thousand feet 



DOWN TO AN ISLAND EDEN 149 

or more, constituting one of the engineering marvels 
of the world. 

The southern slope of the divide appeared to be 
much more thickly peopled than the northern, for, as 
we sped down the steep grades with brakes a-squeal, 
villages of mud-walled, straw-thatched huts became in- 
creasingly frequent, nor did the natives appear to be 
observing Menjepee as strictly as in the vicinity of 
Boeleleng, for they stood in the gateways of their 
kampongs and waved at us as we whirled past, and 
more than once we saw groups of them squatting In a 
circle beside the road, engaged in the national pastime 
of cock-fighting. Now we began to encounter the 
women whose beauty is famous throughout Malaysia : 
glorious, up-standing creatures with great masses of 
blue-black hair, a faint couleur de rose diffusing itself 
through their skins of brown satin. They were taller 
than any other women I saw in Malaysia, lithe and 
supple as Ruth St. Denis, and bearing themselves with 
a quiet dignity and lissome grace. From waist to 
ankle they were tightly wrapped in kains of brilliant 
batik, which defined, without revealing, every line and 
contour of their hips and lower limbs, but from the 
waist up they were entirely nude, barring the flame- 
colored flowers in their dusky hair. 

Unlike most Malays, the eyes of the Balinese, in- 
stead of being oblique, are set straight in the head. 
The nose, which frequently mars what would other- 
wise be well-nigh perfect features, is generally small 
and flat, with too-wide nostrils, though I saw a num- 



I50 STRANGE TRAILS 

ber of Balinese women with noses which were dis- 
tinctly aquiline — the result of a strain of European 
blood, perhaps. The lips are thick, yet well formed; 
the teeth are naturally regular and white but are all 
too often stained scarlet with betel-nut, which is to the 
Balinese girl what chewing-gum is to her sister of 
Broadway. The complexion ranges from a deep but 
rosy brown to a nuance no darker than that of a Euro- 
pean brunette, but in the eyes of the Balinese them- 
selves a golden-yellow complexion, the color of weak 
tea, is the perfection of female beauty. But the chief 
charm of these island Eves is found, after all, not in 
their faces but in their figures — slender, rounded, 
willowy, deep-bosomed, such as Botticelli loved ito 
paint. 

Despite the alluring tales brought back by South 
Sea travelers of the radiant creatures who go about 
unclad as when they were born, I have myself found 
no spot, save only Equatorial Africa, where women 
dispense with clothing habitually and without shame. 
Indeed, I have seen girls far more scantily clad on the 
stage of the Ziegfeld Roof or the Winter Garden 
than I ever have in those distant lands which have not 
yet received the blessings of civilization. In most of 
the Polynesian islands the painter or photographer can 
usually bribe a native girl to disrobe for him, just as 
in Paris or New York he can find models who for a 
consideration will pose in the nude, but when the pic- 
ture is completed she promptly resumes the shapeless 
and hideous garments of Mother Hubbard cut which 



DOWN TO AN ISLAND EDEN 151 

the missionaries were guilty of introducing and whose 
all-enveloping folds, they naively believe, form a 
shield and a buckler against temptations of the flesh. 
But there are no missionaries in Bali, not one — though 
the Board of Foreign Missions may interest itself in 
the Islanders after this book appears — and the women 
continue to dress as they should with such figures and 
in such a climate. 

Because of a flat tire, the driver stopped the car 
beside a little stream in which two extremely pretty 
girls were bathing. With the evening sun glinting on 
their brown bodies and their piquant, oval faces 
framed by the dusky torrents of their loosened hair, 
they looked like those bronze maidens which disport 
themselves in the fountain of the Piazza delle Terme 
in Rome, come to life. I felt certain that they would 
take to flight when Hawkinson unlimbered his motion- 
picture camera and trained it upon them, but they 
continued their joyous splashing without the slightest 
trace of self-consciousness or confusion. In fact, when 
a Ballnese girl becomes embarrassed, she does not be- 
tray it by covering her body but by drawing over her 
face a veil which looks like a piece of black fishnet. 
Their bath completed, the maidens emerged from the 
water on to the farther bank, paused for a moment 
to arrange their hair, like wood nymphs of the Golden 
Age, then wound their gorgeous kains about them and 
vanished amid the trees. From somewhere on the 
distant hillside came the sweet, shrill quaver of a reed 



152 STRANGE TRAILS 

instrument. The driver said it was a native flute, but 
I knew better. It was the pipes of Pan. . . . 

Rather than that you should be scandalized when 
you visit Bali, let me make it quite clear that in mat- 
ters of morality the Balinese women are as easy as an 
old shoe. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say 
that they are unmoral rather than immoral. This is 
one of the conditions of life in the Insulinde which 
must be accepted by the traveler, just as he accepts as 
a matter of course the heat and the insects and the dirt. 
Though polygamy is practised, it is confined, because 
of the expense involved in maintaining a matrimonial 
stable, to the wealthier chiefs and other men of means. 
A Turkish pasha who maintained a large harem once 
told me that polygamy is as trying to the disposition 
as it is to the pocketbook, because of the incessant 
jealousies and bickerings among the wives. And I 
suppose the same conditions obtain in the seraglios of 
Bali. The former rajah of Kloeng Kloeng, now known 
as the Regent, a stout and jovial old gentleman ar- 
rayed in a cerise kain, a sky-blue head-cloth, and a 
white jacket with American twenty-dollar gold pieces 
for buttons, told me with a touch of pride that he had 
twenty-five wives in his harem. But his pride subsided 
like a pricked toy balloon when the Controleur, who 
had overheard the boast, mentioned that another 
regent, the ruler of a district at the western end of the 
island, possessed upward of three hundred wives — of 
the exact number he was not certain as it was con- 



DOWN TO AN ISLAND EDEN 153 

stantly fluctuating. To my great regret I could not 
spare the time to pay a visit to this Bahnese Brigham 
Young. There were a number of questions relative 
to domestic economy and household administration 
which I should have liked to have asked him. 

Until very recent years, the young Balinese girl who 
married an old husband incurred the risk of meeting 
an untimely and extremely unpleasant end, for the 
island was the last stronghold of that strange and 
dreadful Hindu custom, suttee — ^the burning of 
widows. The last public suttee in Bali was held as 
recently as 1907, but, in spite of the stern prohibition 
of the practise by the Dutch, it is said that some women 
faithful to the old customs and to their dead husbands 
continue to join the latter on the funeral pyre. In 
fact, the Controleur at Kloeng Kloeng told me that, 
only a few weeks before my arrival, two women had 
begged him on their knees for permission to be burned 
with the body of the dear departed, whom they wished 
to share in death as in life. 

The Balinese, being devout Hindus, burn their dead, 
but the cremations are held only twice yearly, being 
observed as holidays, like Thanksgiving and the 
Fourth of July. If a man dies shortly before the cre- 
mation season is due, his remains are kept in the house 
until they can be incinerated with befitting ceremony — 
though I imagine that, in view of the torrid climate, 
the members of his family perforce move elsewhere 
for the time being — ^but If he is so inconsiderate as to 
postpone his dying until after one of these semi-annual 



154 STRANGE TRAILS 

burnings, it becomes necessary to bury him. In a land 
where the thermometer frequently registers lOO and 
above, you couldn't keep a corpse around the house for 
several months, could you? When cremation day 
comes round again, however, he is dug up, taken to a 
temple and burned. There is no escaping the funeral- 
pyre in Bali. As we were leaving one of the crema- 
tion places I overheard the Doctor irreverently hum- 
ming a paraphrase of a song which was very popular 
in the army during the war : 

"Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, 
If the grave don't get you the wood-pile must." 



Unlike the South Sea islanders, who are rapidly 
dying out as the result of diseases introduced by Euro- 
peans, the population of Bali — which is one of the 
most densely peopled regions in the world, with 325 
inhabitants to the square mile — is rapidly increasing, 
having more than doubled in the last fifteen years. 
This is due in some measure, no doubt, to the climate, 
which, though hot. Is healthy save in certain low-lying 
coastal districts, but much more, I Imagine, to the fact 
that there are scarcely a hundred Europeans on the 
island, and that, as there are no harbors worthy the 
name, European vessels rarely touch there. It is well 
for the Balinese that their enchanted island has no 
harbors, for harbors mean ships, and ships mean white 
men, and white men, particularly sailors, all too often 



DOWN TO AN ISLAND EDEN 155 

leave undesirable mementoes of their visits behind 
them. 

The men of Bali are a fine, strong, dignified, rather 
haughty race, fit mates In physique for their women. 
They are considerably taller than any other Malays 
whom I saw and possess less Mongoloid and Negroid 
characteristics, these being subdued by some strong 
primeval alien strain which Is undoubtedly Caucasian. 
Though now peaceable enough, every Balinese man 
carries In his sash a kris — the long, curly-bladed knife 
which is the national weapon of Malaysia. Most of 
the krises that I examined were more ornamental than 
serviceable, some of them having scabbards of solid 
gold and hilts set with precious stones. Moreover, 
they are worn against the middle of the back, where 
they must be difficult to reach In an emergency. I 
imagine that the kris, universal though it is, serves as 
a symbol of former militancy rather than as a fighting 
weapon, just as the buttons at the back of our tailcoats 
serve to remind us that their original purpose was to 
support a sword-belt. But, though the Balinese have 
made no serious trouble for their Dutch rulers for 
upward of a decade, they long resisted European 
domination, as evidenced by the four bloody uprisings 
in the last three-quarters of a century — the last was 
In 1908 — which were suppressed only with difficulty 
and considerable loss of life. When the shells from 
the gunboats began to burst over their towns, the 
rajahs, recognizing that their cause was lost, nerved 
themselves with opium and committed the traditional 



156 STRANGE TRAILS 

puputan, or, with their wives, threw themselves on the 
Dutch bayonets. But, though the Balinese have bowed 
perforce to the authority of the stout young woman 
who dwells in The Hague, they have none of the cring- 
ing servility, that look of pathetic appeal such as you 
see in the eyes of dogs which have been mistreated, so 
characteristic of the Javanese. 

Though the three-quarters of a million natives in 
Bali have behind them the traditions of countless wars, 
the Dutch, who seem to possess an extraordinary tal- 
ent for governing brown-skinned peoples, maintain 
their authority with a few companies of native sol- 
diery officered by a handful of Europeans. The suc- 
cess of the Dutch in ruling Malays, who are notori- 
ously turbulent and warlike, is largely due to the fact 
that, so long as the customs of the natives are not 
inimical to good government or to their own well- 
being, they studiously refrain from interfering with 
them. Nor is there the same social chasm separating 
Europeans and natives in the Insulinde which is found 
in Britain's Eastern possessions. Were a British of- 
ficial in India to marry a native woman he would be 
promptly recalled in disgrace ; if a Dutch official mar- 
ries a native woman she is accorded the same social 
recognition as her husband. Though in the old days 
probably ninety per cent of the Dutch officials and 
planters in the Insulinde lived with native women, 
these unions are constantly decreasing, today probably 
not more than ten per cent of the Europeans thus solv- 
ing their domestic problems. It struck me, moreover, 



DOWN TO AN ISLAND EDEN 157 

that the Dutch are more in sympathy with their native 
subjects, that they understand them better, than the 
British. It is a remarkable thing, when you stop to 
think of it, that a little nation like Holland, with a 
colonial army of less than thirty-five thousand men and 
no fleet worthy of the name, should be able to main- 
tain its authority over fifty millions of natives, ten 
thousand miles away, with so little friction. 

We passed the night in the small rest-house at Den 
Pasar which the government maintains for the use 
of its officials. I have said that we passed the night, 
mark you; I refuse to toy with the truth to the extent 
of saying that we slept. Why they call it a rest-house 
I cannot imagine. Never that I can recall, save only 
in a zoo, have I found myself on such intimate terms 
with so many forms of animal life as in that passan- 
grahan. Cockroaches nearly as large as mice (before 
you raise your eyebrows at this statement talk with 
anyone who has traveled in Malaysia), spiders, centi- 
pedes, ants and beetles made my bedroom an entomolo- 
gist's paradise. Some large winged animal, presum- 
ably a fruit-bat or a flying-fox, entered by the window 
and circled the room like an airplane; and, judging 
from the sounds which proceeded from beneath the 
bed, I gathered that the room also harbored a snake 
or a large rat, though which I was not certain as I 
saw no reason for investigating. A family of lizards 
disported themselves on the ceiling and when I men- 
aced them with a stick they departed so hastily that 
one of them abandoned his tail, which dropped on the 



158 STRANGE TRAILS 

wash-stand. A squadron of mosquitoes — a sort of 
escadrtlle de chasse, as it were — kept me awake until 
daybreak, when they were relieved by a skirmishing 
party of cimex lectulariae, which are well known in 
America under a shorter and less polite name. Fishes 
only were absent, but I am convinced that their neglect 
of me was due to ignorance of my presence. Had they 
known of it I feel certain that the climbing fish, which 
is one of the curiosities of these waters, would have 
flopped on to my pillow. 

Upon our arrival at Kloeng Kloeng I found the 
Controleur, who had been notified by the Resident at 
Singaradja of our coming, had made arrangements for 
an elaborate series of native dances to be given that 
afternoon on the lawn of the residency. It is a simple 
matter to arrange a dance in Bali, for every village, 
no matter how small, supports a ballet, and usually a 
troupe of actors as well, just as an American com- 
munity supports a baseball team. The money for the 
gorgeous costumes worn by the dancers is raised by 
local subscription and the ballet frequently visits the 
neighboring towns to give exhibitions or to engage in 
competitions, contingents of the dancers' townspeople 
usually going along to root for them. 

The Balinese dances require many years of arduous 
and constant training. A girl is scarcely out of the 
sling by which Balinese children are carried on the 
mother's back before, under the tutelage of her 
mother, who has herself perhaps been a dancing-girl 
in her time, she begins the severe course of gymnastics 



DOWN TO AN ISLAND EDEN 159 

and muscle training which are the foundations of all 
Eastern dances. From infancy until, not yet in her 
teens, she becomes a member of the village ballet or 
enters the harem of a local rajah, she is as assiduously 
trained and groomed as a race-horse entered for the 
Derby. From morning until night, day after day, 
year after year, the muscles of her shoulders, her back, 
her hips, her legs, her abdomen are suppled and de- 
veloped until they will respond to her wishes as readily 
as her slender, henna-stained fingers. 

The lawn on which the dances were held sloped 
down, like a great green rug, from the squat white 
residency to an ancient Hindu temple, whose walls, of 
red-brown sandstone, were transformed by the setting 
sun into rosy coral. The Bali temples are but open 
courtyards enclosed within high walls, their entrances 
flanked by towering gate-posts, grotesquely carved. 
Within the courtyards, which have arrangements for 
the cremation of the dead as well as for the refresh- 
ment of the living, are numerous roofed platforms and 
small, elevated shrines, reached by steep flights of nar- 
row steps, every square inch being covered with intri- 
cate and fantastic carvings. These carvings are for 
the most part beautifully colored, so that, when illumi- 
nated by the sun, they look like those porcelain bas- 
reliefs which one buys in Florence, or, if the colors are 
undimmed by age, like Persian enamel. In some of 
the temples which I visited, the colorings had been 
ruthlessly obliterated by coats of whitewash, but in 
those communities where Hinduism is still a living 



i6o STRANGE TRAILS 

force, the inhabitants frequently impoverish them- 
selves in order to provide the gold-leaf with which 
the interiors of the shrines are covered, just as the 
congregations of American churches praise God with 
carven pulpits and windows of stained glass. 

The stage setting for the dances consisted of a 
small, portable pagoda, heavily gilded and set with 
mirrors — nothing more, unless you include the back- 
drop provided by the Indian Ocean. On either side of 
the pagoda, which was set in the centre of- the lawn, 
squatted a motionless native holding a long-handled 
parasol of gold, known as a payong. So far as I 
could discover, the purpose of these parasol holders 
was purely ornamental, like the palms that flank a 
concert stage, for they never stirred throughout the 
four hours that the dancing lasted. The dancers them- 
selves were extremely young — barely in their teens, I 
should say — but I could only guess their ages as their 
faces were so heavily enameled that they might as well 
have been wearing masks. Their costumes, faithful 
reproductions of those depicted in the carvings on the 
walls of the temples, were of a gorgeousness which 
made the creations of Bakst seem colorless and tame: 
tightly-wound kains of cloth-of-gold over which were 
draped silks in all the colors of the chromatic scale. 
Their necks and arms, which were stained a saffron 
yellow, were hung with jewels or near-jewels. On 
their heads were towering, indescribable affairs of 
feathers, flowers and tinsel, faintly reminiscent of those 



DOWN TO AN ISLAND EDEN i6i 

fantastic headdresses affected by the lamented Gaby. 
The music was furnished by a gamelan, or orchestra, 
of half-a-hundred musicians playing on drums, gongs 
and reeds, with a few xylophones thrown in for good 
measure. I am no judge of music, but it seemed to me 
that when the gamelan was working at full speed it 
compared very favorably with an American jazz or- 
chestra. 

All the dances illustrated episodes from the Rama- 
yana or other Hindu mythologies localized, the story 
being recited in a monotonous, sing-song chant, in the 
old Kawi or sacred language, by a professional ac- 
companist who sat, cross-legged, in the orchestra. As 
a result of constant drilling since babyhood, the Balin- 
ese dancers attain a perfection of technique unknown 
on the western stage, but the visitor who expects to 
see the verve and abandon of the Indian dances as por- 
trayed by Ruth St. Denis is certain to be disappointed. 
To tell the truth, the dances of Bali, like those I saw in 
Java and Cambodia, are rather tedious performances, 
beautiful, it is true, but almost totally lacking in that 
fire and spirit which we associate with the East. It is 
probable, however, that I am not sufficiently educated 
in the art of Terpsichore to appreciate them. It was as 
though I had been given a selection from Die Niebe- 
lungen Lied when I had looked for rag-time. But the 
natives are passionately fond of them, it being by no 
means uncommon, I was told, for a dance to begin in 
the late afternoon and continue without interruption un- 
til daybreak. The Controleur told me that he planned 



i62 STRANGE TRAILS 

to utilize his next long leave in taking a native ballet to 
Europe, and, perhaps, to the United States. So, 
should you see the Bali dancers advertised to appear on 
Broadway, I strongly advise you not to miss them. 

Instead of going to Palm Beach next winter, or to 
Havana, or to the Riviera, why don't you go out to 
Bali and see its lovely women, its curious customs, and 
its superb scenery for yourself? You can get there in 
about eight weeks, provided you make good connec- 
tions at Singapore and Surabaya. With no railways, 
no street-cars, no hotels, no newspapers, no theatres, 
no movies, it is a very restful place. You can lounge 
the lazy days away in the cool depths of flower-smoth- 
ered verandahs, with a brown house-boy pulling at the 
punkah-rope and another bringing you cool drinks in 
tall, thin glasses — for the Volstead Act does not run 
west of the i6oth meridian — or you can stroll in the 
moonlight on the long white beaches with lithe brown 
beauties who wear passion-flowers in their raven hair. 
Or, should you weary of so dolce far niente an exist- 
ence, you can sail across to Java with the opium- 
runners in their fragile prahaus, or climb a two-mile- 
high volcano, or in the jungles at the western extremity 
of the island stalk the clouded tiger. And you can wear 
pajamas all day long without apologizing. Everything 
considered, Bali offers more inducements than any 
place I know to the tired business man or the abscond- 
ing bank cashier. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE GARDEN THAT IS JAVA 

I ENTERED Java through the back door, as it were. 
That is to say, instead of landing at Batavia, which is 
the capital of Netherlands India, and presenting my 
letters of introduction to the Governor-General, Count 
van Limburg Stirum, I landed at Pasuruan, at the 
eastern extremity of the six-hundred-mlle-long island. 
It was as though a foreigner visiting the United States 
were to land at Sag Harbor, on the far end of Long 
Island, instead of at New York. I learned afterward, 
from the American Consul-General at Batavia, that in 
doing this I committed a breach of etiquette. Though 
the Dutch make no official objections to foreigners 
landing where they please in their Eastern possessions, 
they much prefer to have them ring the front door- 
bell, hand in their cards, and give the authorities an 
opportunity to look them over. In these days, with 
Bolshevik emissaries stealthily at work throughout the 
archipelago, the Dutch feel that it behooves them to 
inspect strangers with some care before giving them 
the run of the islands. 

We landed at Pasuruan because it) is the port 
nearest to Bromo, the most famous of the great vol- 
canoes of Eastern Java, but as there is no harbor, only 

163 



1 64 STRANGE TRAILS 

a shallow, unprotected roadstead, It was necessary for 
the Negros to anchor nearly three miles offshore. So 
shallow is the water, indeed, that it is a common sight 
at low tide to see the native fishermen standing knee- 
deep in the sea a mile from land. Until quite recently 
debarkation at Pasuruan was an extremely uncomfort- 
able and undignified proceeding, the passengers on the 
infrequent vessels which touch there being carried 
ashore astride of a rail borne on the shoulders of two 
natives. A coat of tar and feathers was all that was 
needed to make the passenger feel that he was a victim 
of the Ku Klux Klan. But a narrow channel has now 
been dredged through the sand-bar so that row-boats 
and launches of shallow draught can make their way 
up the squdgy creek to the custom house at high tide. 

Until half a century ago Pasuruan was counted 
as one of the four great cities of Java, but with the 
extension of the railway system throughout the island 
and the development of the harbor at Surabaya, forty 
miles away, its importance steadily diminished, though 
traces of its one-time prosperity are still visible in its 
fine streets and beautiful houses, most of which, how- 
ever, are now occupied by Chinese. Perhaps the most 
interesting feature of the place today is found in the 
costumes of the native women, particularly the girls, 
who wear a kind of shirt and veil combining all the 
colors of the rainbow. 

From Pasuruan to Tosari, which is a celebrated 
hill-station and the gateway to the volcanoes of eastern 
Java, is about twenty-five miles, with an excellent 



THE GARDEN THAT IS JAVA 165 

motor road all the way. For the first ten miles the 
road, here a wide avenue shaded by tamarinds and 
djati trees, runs across a steaming plain, between fields 
of rice and cane, but after Pasrepan the ascent of the 
mountains begins. The highway now becomes ex- 
tremely steep and narrow, with countless hairpin turns, 
though all danger of collision is eliminated by the regu- 
lations which permit no down-traffic in the morning 
and no up-traffic in the afternoon. During the final 
fifteen miles, in which is made an ascent of more than 
six thousand feet, one has the curious experience of 
passing, in a single hour, from the torrid to the tem- 
perate zone. In the earlier stages of the ascent the 
road zigzags upward through magnificent tropical 
forests, where troops of huge gray apes chatter in the 
upper branches and grass-green parrots flash from tree 
to tree. Palms of all varieties, orchids, tree-ferns, 
bamboos, bananas, mangoes, gradually give way to 
slender pines; the heavy odors of the tropics are re- 
placed by a pleasant balsamic fragrance; the hill- 
sides become clothed with familiar flowers — daisies, 
buttercups, heliotrope, roses, fuchsias, geraniums, can- 
nas, camelias, Easter lilies, azaleas, morning glories, 
until the mountain-slopes look like a vast old-fashioned 
garden. In the fields, instead of rice and cane, straw- 
berries, potatoes, cabbages, onions, and corn, are seen. 
As the road ascends the air becomes cold and 
very damp; rain-clouds gather on the mountains and 
there are frequent showers. At one point the mist be- 
came so thick that I could scarcely discern the figure 



i66 STRANGE TRAILS 

of my chauffeur and we were compelled to advance 
with the utmost caution, for at many points the road, 
none too wide at best, falls sheer away in dizzy preci- 
pices. But as suddenly as it came, just as suddenly did 
the mist lift, revealing the great plain of Pasuruan, 
a mile below, stretching away, away, until its green 
was blended with the turquoise of the Java Sea. It 
is a veritable Road of a Thousand Wonders, but there 
are spots where those who do not relish great heights 
and narrow spaces will explain that they prefer to walk 
so that they may gather wild-flowers. 

Were it not for the wild appearance of its Tenn- 
gri mountaineers, Tosari, which is the best health 
resort in Java, might be readily mistaken for an Alpine 
village, for it has the same steep and straggling 
streets, the same weather-beaten chalets clinging pre- 
cariously to the rocky hillsides, the same quaint shops, 
their windows filled with souvenirs and postcards, the 
same glorious view of green valleys and majestic peaks, 
the same crisp, cool air, as exhilarating as champagne. 
The Sanatarium Hotel, which is always filled with 
sallow-faced officials and planters from the plains, con- 
sists of a large main building built in the Swiss chalet 
style and numerous bungalows set amid a gorgeous 
garden of old-fashioned flowers. Every bedroom has 
a bath — but such a bath! — a damp, gloomy, cement- 
lined cell having in one corner a concrete cistern, filled 
with ice-cold mountain water. The only furniture is a 
tin dipper. And it takes real courage, let me tell you, 



THE GARDEN THAT IS JAVA 167 

to ladle that icy water over your shivering person in 
the chill of a mountain morning. 

The mountain slopes in the vicinity of Tosari are 
dotted with the wretched wooden huts of the native 
tribe called Tenggerese, the only race in Java which 
has remained faithful to Buddhism. There are only 
about five thousand of them and they keep to them- 
selves in their own community, shut out from the rest 
of the world. They are shorter and darker than the 
natives of the plains and, like most savages, are lazy, 
ignorant and incredibly filthy. Because the air is cool 
and dry, and water rather scarce, they never bathe, pre- 
ferring to remain dirty. As a result the aroma of their 
villages is a thing not soon forgotten. The doors of 
their huts, which have no windows, all face Mount 
Bromo, where their guardian deity, Dewa Soelan Iloe, 
is supposed to dwell. Once each year the Tenggerese 
hold a great feast at the foot of the volcano, and, until 
the Dutch authorities suppressed the custom, were ac- 
customed to conclude these ceremonies by tossing a liv- 
ing child into the crater as a sacrifice to their god. 
Though an ancient tradition forbids the cultivation of 
rice by the Tenggerese, they earn a meager living by 
raising vegetables, which they carry on horseback to the 
markets on the plain, and by acting as guides and 
coolies. They are incredibly strong and tireless, the 
two men who carried Hawkinson's heavy motion- 
picture outfit to the summit of Bromo making the 
round trip of forty miles in a single day over some of 
the steepest trails I have ever seen. 



i68 STRANGE TRAILS 

Growing on the mountainsides about Tosari are 
many bushes of thorn apple, called Datara alba, their 
white, funnel-shaped flowers being sometimes twelve 
inches long. From the seeds of the thorn apple 
the Tenggerese make a sort of flour which is strongly 
narcotic in its effect. Because of this quality, it is occa- 
sionally utilized by burglars, who blow it into a room 
which they propose to rob, through the key-hole, there- 
by drugging the occupants into insensibility and mak- 
ing it easy for the burglars to gain access to the room 
and help themselves to its contents. Which reminds me 
that in some parts of Malaysia native desperadoes 
are accustomed to pound the fronds of certain varie- 
ties of palm to the consistency of powdered glass. 
They carry a small quantity of this powder with them 
and when they meet anyone against whom they have a 
grudge they blow it into his face. The sharp particles, 
being inhaled, quickly affect the lungs and death usually 
results. A friend of mine, for many years an Amer- 
ican consul in the East, once had the misfortune to be 
next to the victim of such an attack, and himself in- 
haled a small quantity of the deadly powder. The 
lung trouble which shortly developed hastened, if it 
did not actually cause, his death. 

That we might reach the Moengal Pass at daybreak 
in order to see the superb panorama of Bromo and 
the adjacent volcanoes as revealed by the rising sun, we 
started from Tosari at two o'clock in the morning. 
Our mounts were wiry mountain ponies, hardy as 
mustangs and sure-footed as goats. And it was 



THE GARDEN THAT IS JAVA 169 

well that they were, for the trail was the steepest and 
narrowest that I have ever seen negotiated by horses. 
The Bright Angel Trail, which leads from the rim of 
the Grand Canon down to the Colorado, is a Central 
Park bridle-path in comparison. In places the grade 
rose to fifty per cent and in many of the descents I had 
to lean back until my head literally touched the pony's 
tail. It recalled the days, long past, when, as a student 
at the Italian Cavalry School, I was called upon to ride 
down the celebrated precipice at Tor di Quinto. But 
there, if your mount slipped, a thick bed of sawdust 
was awaiting you to break the fall. Here there was 
nothing save jagged rocks. We started in pitch dark- 
ness and for three hours rode through a night so black 
that I could not see my pony's ears. The trail, 
which in places was barely a foot wide, ran for miles 
along a sort of hogback, the ground falling sheer away 
on either side. It was like riding blindfolded along 
the ridgepole of a church, and, had my pony slipped, 
the results would have been the same. 

But the trials of the ascent were forgotten in the 
overwhelming grandeur of the scene which burst upon 
us as, just at sunrise, we drew rein at the summit of the 
Moengal Pass. Never, not in the Rockies, nor the 
Himalayas, nor the Alps, have I seen anything more 
sublime. At our feet yawned a vast valley, or rather 
a depression, like an excavation for some titanic build- 
ing, hemmed in by perpendicular cliffs a thousand feet 
in height. Wafted by the morning breeze a mighty 
river of clouds poured slowly down the valley, filling 



170 STRANGE TRAILS 

it with gray-white fleece from brim to brim. Slowly 
the clouds dissolved before the mounting sun until there 
lay revealed below us the floor of the depression, 
known as the Sand Sea, its yellow surface, smooth as 
the beach at Ormond, slashed across by the beds of 
dried-up streams and dotted with clumps of stunted 
vegetation. Like the Sahara it is boundless — a sym- 
bol of solitude and desolation. When, in the early 
morning or toward nightfall, the conical volcanoes 
cast their lengthening shadows upon this expanse of 
sand, it reminds one of the surface of the moon as 
seen through a telescope. But at midday, beneath the 
pitiless rays of the equatorial sun, it resembles an enor- 
mous pool of molten brass, the illusion being height- 
ened by the heat-waves which flicker and dance above it. 
From the center of the Sand Sea rises the extinct crater 
of Batok, a sugar-loaf cone whose symmetrical slopes 
are so corrugated by hardened rivulets of lava that 
they look for all the world like folds of gray-brown 
cloth. Beyond Batok we could catch a glimpse of 
Bromo itself, belching skyward great clouds of bil- 
lowing smoke and steam, while from its crater came 
a rumble as of distant thunder. And far in the dis- 
tance, its purple bulk faintly discernible against the 
turquoise sky, rose Smeroe, the greatest volcano of 
them all. 

The descent from the Moengal Pass to the Sand Sea 
is so steep that it is necessary to make it on foot, even 
the nimble-footed ponies having all they can do to 
scramble down the precipitous and slippery trail. It is 




The volcano of Bromo, Eastern Java, in eruption 



THE GARDEN THAT IS JAVA 171 

well to cross the Sand Sea as soon after daybreak as 
possible, for by mid-morning the heat is like a blast 
from an open furnace-door. It is a four mile ride 
across the Sand Sea to the lower slopes of Bromo, but 
the sand is firm and hard and we let the ponies break 
into a gallop — an exhilarating change from the tedious 
crawl necessary in the mountains. Then came a stiff 
climb of a mile or more over fantastically shaped hills 
of lava, the final ascent to the brink of the crater being 
accomplished by a flight of two hundred and fifty stone 
steps. The crater of Bromo is shaped like a huge fun- 
nel, seven hundred feet deep and nearly half a mile 
across. From it belch unceasingly dark gray clouds pf 
smoke and sulphurous fumes, while now and then 
large rocks are spewed high in the air only to fall back 
again, rolling down the inside slope of the crater with 
a thunderous rumble, as though the god whom the 
Tenggerese believe dwells on the mountain was playing 
at ten-pins. Deep down at the bottom of the crater 
jets of greenish-yellow sulphur flicker in a cauldron 
of molten lava, from which a red flame now and then 
leaps upward, like an out-thrust serpent's tongue. No 
wonder that the ignorant mountaineers look on Bromo 
with fear and veneration, for it huddles there, in the 
midst of that awful solitude, like some monster in 
its death agony, gasping and groaning. 

The transition from the lofty solitudes of the Teng- 
ger Mountains to the steaming, teeming thoroughfares 
of Surabaya, the metropolis of eastern Java, is not a 
pleasant one. For Surabaya — there are no less than 



172 STRANGE TRAILS 

half-a-dozen ways of spelling its name — though the 
greatest trading port In Java, from the point of view of 
the visitor is not an attractive city. Neither is it a 
healthy place, for it has a hot, humid, sticky climate, it 
lacks good drinking water and enjoys no refreshing 
breeze; mosquitoes feed on one's body and red ants on 
one's belongings; malaria and typhoid are prevalent 
and even bubonic plague is not unknown, the combined 
effect of all these showing in the sallow and enervated 
faces of its inhabitants. Yet It Is a bustling, up-and- 
dolng city, as different from phlegmatic, conservative 
old Batavia as Los Angeles is from Boston. 

Unlike the houses of Batavia, which stand far back 
from the street in lovely gardens, the houses of Sura- 
baya are built directly on the street, with their gardens 
at the back. Most of the houses of the better class 
are in the Dutch colonial style — low and white with 
green blinds and across the front a stately row of 
columns. Every house is marked with a huge sign- 
board bearing the number and the owner's name, thus 
making it easy for the stranger to find the one for 
which he is looking. There are no sidewalks and, as a 
consequence, walking is anything but pleasant, the 
streets being deep in dust during the dry season and 
equally deep in mud during the rains. I do not recall 
ever having seen a city of its size with so much wheeled 
traffic. Indeed, the scene on the SImpang Road about 
three in the afternoon, when the merchants are re- 
turning to their offices after the midday siesta, re- 
sembles that on Fifth Avenue at the rush hour, the 



THE GARDEN THAT IS JAVA 173 

broad thoroughfare being literally packed from curb 
to curb with vehicles of every description: the ram- 
shackle little victorias known as mylords, the high, 
two-wheeled dog-carts, with their seats back to back, 
called sados, the two-pony cabs termed kosongs, creak- 
ing bullock carts with wheels higher than a man, 
hand-cars and rickshaws hauled by dripping coolies, 
and other coolies staggering along beneath the weight 
of burdens swinging from the carrying-poles called 
pikolans, and every make and model of motor-cars 
from ostentatious, self-important Rolls-Royces to 
busybody Fords. Standing In the middle of the road- 
way, controlling and directing this roaring river of 
traffic with surprising efficiency are diminutive Javan- 
ese policemen wearing blue helmets many sizes too 
large for them and armed with revolvers, swords and 
clubs. 

The port of Surabaya, which is the busiest in the 
entire Insulinde, Is four miles from the business section 
of the city, with which it Is connected by a splendid as- 
phalt highway lined by huge warehouses, factories, go- 
downs and oil-tanks, many of them bearing familiar 
American names. In fact, one of the first things to at- 
tract my attention in Java was the great variety of 
American articles on sale and in use — motor cars, tires, 
typewriters, office supplies, cameras, phonographs, 
agricultural machinery of all descriptions. 

More than a tenth of Surabaya's population is Chi- 
nese and their commercial Influence dominates the 
whole city. They have the finest residences, the most 



174 STRANGE TRAILS 

luxurious clubs, the largest shops, the handsomest mo- 
tor cars. I was shown a row of warehouses extending 
along the canal for one long block which are the prop- 
erty of a single Chinese. Wherever I traveled in the 
Indies I was impressed by the business acumen and 
success of these impassive, industrious sons of the 
Flowery Kingdom. They are the Greeks of the Far 
East but without the Greek's unscrupulousness and 
lack of dependability. A Chinese will not hesitate to 
take advantage of you in a business deal, but if he once 
gives you his word he will always keep it, no matter at 
what cost to himself, and if you should leave your 
pocketbook in his shop he will come hurrying after 
you to restore it. The Chinese living in the Indies 
are uniformly prosperous — many of them are mil- 
lionaires — they have their own clubs and chambers 
of commerce and charitable organizations; they not 
infrequently control the finances of the districts in 
which they live and, generally speaking, they make ex- 
cellent citizens. 

Java has almost exactly the same area — 50,000 
square miles — and the same population — 34,000,000 
— as England. Agriculturally, it is the richest country 
of its size in the world. Because I wished to visit 
the great tea and coffee and indigo plantations of 
its interior and to see its palaces and temples and 
monuments, I decided to traverse the island from end 
to end by train and motor car. Accordingly we left 
the Negros at Surabaya, directing Captain Galvez to 



THE GARDEN THAT IS JAVA 175 

pick us up a fortnight later at Batavia, at the other end 
of the island. 

There are at present more than three thousand miles 
of railways in operation in Java, about two-thirds of 
which are the property of the government. With a few 
exceptions, the lines are narrow gauge. The railway 
carriages are a curious combination of English, Swiss 
and American construction, being divided into compart- 
ments, which are separated by swinging half-doors, like 
those which used to be associated with saloons. The 
seats in the second-class compartments, which are cov- 
ered with cane, are decidedly more comfortable than 
those of the first class, which are upholstered in leather. 
Owing to the excessive heat and humidity, the leather 
has the annoying habit of adhering to one's clothing, 
so that you frequently leave the train after a long jour- 
ney with a section of the seat-covering sticking to your 
trousers or with a section of your trousers sticking to 
the seat. To avoid the discomfort of the midday heat, 
the long-distance express trains usually start at day- 
break and reach their destinations at noon, which, 
though doubtless a sensible custom, necessitates the 
traveler arising when it is still dark. The express 
trains have dining cars, in which a meal of sorts can be 
had for two guilders (about eighty cents) and the first 
and second-class carriages are equipped with electric 
fans and screens. In spite of these conveniences, how- 
ever, travel in Java is hot and dusty and generally dis- 
agreeable. After a railway journey one needs a bath, a 
shave, a haircut, a shampoo, a massage, and a complete 



176 STRANGE TRAILS 

outfit of fresh clothes before feeling respectable again. 

In many respects, motoring is more comfortable 
than railway travel. The roads throughout the island 
are excellent and have been carefully marked by the 
Java Motor Club, though fast driving is made danger- 
ous by the bullock carts, pack trains and carabaos, 
which pay no attention to the rules of the road. Nor 
is motoring particularly expensive, for an excellent 
seven-passenger car of a well-known American make 
can be hired for forty dollars a day. Visitors to Java 
should bear in mind, however, that all their motoring 
and sight-seeing must be done in the morning, as, during 
the wet season, it invariably rains in torrents during the 
greater part of every afternoon. 

The hotels of Java, taking them by and large, are 
moderately good, while certain of them, such as the 
Oranje at Surabaya, the Grand at Djokjakarta, and 
the Indies at Batavia, are quite excellent in spots, with 
orchestras, iced drinks, electric fans, and well-cooked 
food. Though every room has a bath — a necessity in 
such a chmate — tubs are quite unknown, their place 
being taken by showers, or, in the simpler hostleries, 
by barrels of water and dippers. The mattresses and 
pillows appeared to be filled with asphalt, though it 
should be remembered that a soft bed is unendurable 
in the tropics. Every bed is provided with a cylin- 
drical bolster, six feet long and about fifteen inches in 
diameter, which serves to keep the sheet from touching 
the body. They are known as "Dutch widows." 

If you are fond of good coffee, I should strongly 



THE GARDEN THAT IS JAVA 177 

advise you to take your own with you when you go to 
Java. From my boyhood "Old Government Java" 
had been a synonym in our household for the finest 
coffee grown, so my astonishment and disappointment 
can be imagined when, at my first breakfast in Java, 
there was set before me a cup containing a dubious look- 
ing syrup, like those used at American soda-water foun- 
tains, the cup then being filled up with hot milk. The 
Germans never would have complained about their 
war-time coffee, made from chicory and acorns, had 
they once tasted the Java product. Yet I was assured 
that this was the choicest coffee grown in Java. 
I might add that, as a result of a blight which all but 
ruined the industry in the '70s, fifty-two per cent of the 
total acreage of coffee plantations in the island is now 
planted with the African species, called Cofea rohusta, 
and thirteen per cent with another African species, 
Cofea liberia, and the rest with Japanese and other 
varieties. Though the term "Mocha and Java" is 
still used by the trade in the United States, few Amer- 
icans of the present generation have ever tasted either, 
for virtually no Mocha coffee and very little Java have 
been imported into this country for many years. 

The lazy, leisurely, luxurious existence led by the 
great Dutch planters in Java is in many respects a 
counterpart of that led by the wealthy planters of our 
own South before the Civil War. Dwelling in stately 
mansions set in the midst of vast estates, waited upon 
by retinues of native servants, they exercise much the 
same arbitrary authority over the thousands of brown 



178 STRANGE TRAILS 

men who work their coffee, sugar and indigo planta- 
tions that the cotton-growers of the old South exer- 
cised over their slaves. Indeed, it was not until 19 14 
that a form of peonage which had long been author- 
ized in Java was abolished by law, for up to that year 
private landowners had the right to enforce from all 
the laborers on their estates one day's gratuitous work 
out of seven. 

There are no shrewder or more capable business 
men to be found anywhere than the Dutch traders and 
merchants in Java. Many of the great trading houses 
of the Dutch Indies have remained the property of the 
same family for generations, their staffs being as care- 
fully trained for the business as the Dutch officials are 
trained for the colonial service. The young men come 
out from Holland as cadets with the Intention of spend- 
ing the remainder of their lives in the Insullnde, study- 
ing the native languages and acquainting themselves 
with native prejudices, predilections and customs. They 
are usually blessed with a phlegmatic temperament, 
well suited to life in the tropics, take life easily, live in 
considerable luxury, play a little tennis, grow fat, spend 
their afternoons in pajamas and slippers, stroll down 
to the local Concordia Club In the evenings to sit at 
small tables on the terrace and drink enormous quanti- 
ties of beer and listen to the band, not infrequently 
marry native women, and often amass great fortunes. 

Though the Javanese peasant is, from necessity, in- 
dustrious, the upper classes, particularly the nobles, 
are effeminate, indolent, decadent, and servile. Their 



THE GARDEN THAT IS JAVA 179 

amusements are cock-fighting, dancing, shadow plays, 
and gambling, and they lead an utterly worthless exist- 
ence which the Dutch do nothing to discourage. Their 
Mohammedanism is decadent and has none of the 
virility which distinguishes those followers of Islam 
who dwell in western lands. Though there is no deny- 
ing that the natives are immeasurably more prosper- 
ous, on the whole, than before the white man came, the 
Dutch have done little if anything to improve their liv- 
ing conditions. True, their rule is a just and a not un- 
kind one; they have built roads and railways, but 
this was done in order to open up the island; and they 
have established a number of industrial and technical 
schools, but there is no system of compulsory education, 
and no systematic attempt has been made to ameliorate 
the condition of the great brown mass of the people. 
I do not think that I am doing them an Injustice when 
I assert that the Dutch are administrators rather than 
altruists, that they are more concerned in maintaining a 
just and stable government in their insular possessions, 
and in increasing their productivity, than they are in 
improving the moral, mental, and material condition 
of the natives. 

Lying squarely in the middle of Java are the For- 
stenlanden, "the Lands of the Princes" — Soerakarta 
and Djokjakarta — the most curious, as they are the 
most picturesque, states in the entire Insullnde. But, 
because in their form of government and the lives and 
customs of their inhabitants they are so vastly different 



i8o STRANGE TRAILS 

from the other portions of the island, I feel that they 
are deserving of a chapter to themselves and hence 
shall omit any account of them here. 

Bandoeng, the prosperous and extremely up-to-date 
capital of the Preanger Regencies, is the fifth largest 
city in Java, being exceeded in population only by Ba- 
tavia, Surabaya, Surakarta and Samarang. The city, 
which is the healthiest and most modern in Java, stands 
in the middle of a great plain, 2300 feet above the sea, 
having, therefore, a delightful all-the-year-round cli- 
mate. It has excellent electric lighting, water and sani- 
tary systems, miles of well-paved and shaded streets, 
and many beautiful residences — the finest I saw in 
Malaysia — set in the midst of charming gardens. It is 
planned to remove the seat of government from Ba- 
tavia to Bandoeng in the not far distant future and 
the handsome buildings which will eventually house 
the various departments are rapidly nearing comple- 
tion. When they are completed Bandoeng will be one 
of the finest, if not the finest colonial capital in the 
world. But, attractive though the city is, it holds noth- 
ing of particular interest to the casual visitor unless it 
be the quinine factory. This company seems likely to 
succeed in cornering the supply of Javanese cinchona 
bark and is fast building up a world market for its 
product. The cinchona tree, from which the bark is ob- 
tained, was first introduced from South America in 
the middle of the last century and is now widely grown 
throughout the Preanger Regencies, both by the gov- 



THE GARDEN THAT IS JAVA i8i 

ernment and by private planters. After six or seven 
years the tree is sufficiently matured for the removal 
of its bark, which, after being carefully dried, sorted, 
and baled, is shipped to the factory in Bandoeng, 
where it is manufactured into the quinine of commerce. 
The process of manufacture is a secret one, which ex- 
plains, though it does not excuse, the extreme discour- 
tesy shown by the management toward foreigners de- 
siring to visit the plant. 

It takes three and a half hours by express train from 
Bandoeng to Buitenzorg, the summer capital of the 
Indies, and the journey is one of the pleasantest in 
Java, the railway being bordered for miles by marvel- 
lously constructed rice terraces which climb the slopes 
of the Gedei, tier on tier, transforming the mountain- 
sides into a series of hanging gardens. When the 
shallow, water-filled terraces are illuminated by the 
tropic sun, they look for all the world like a titanic 
stairway of silver ascending to the heavens. Take my 
word for it, the rice terraces of the Preangers are in 
themselves worth traveling the length of Java to see. 

Though Batavia is the official capital of Netherlands 
India, the hill-station of Buitenzorg, some twenty miles 
inland, is the actual seat of government and the resi- 
dence of the Governor-General. Buitenzorg — the 
name means "free from care" — is to Java what Simla 
is to India, what Baguio is, in a lesser degree, to the 
Philippines. It has often been compared to Versailles, 
and, in its pleasant existence, in the enchanting effects 
which have been produced by its landscape gardeners, 



1 82 STRANGE TRAILS 

in its great white palace even, one can trace some 
slight resemblance to the famous home of le Roi Soleil. 
Buitenzorg is conspicuously different from other Jav- 
anese cities, partly because, being the seat of govern- 
ment, its European quarter is exceptionally extensive, 
but primarily because it boasts the famous Botanical 
Gardens, in many respects the finest in the world. Its 
avenues, shaded by splendid trees, are lined with 
charming, white-walled villas, the residences of the gov- 
ernment officials and of retired officers and merchants, 
set far back in lovely, fragrant gardens. The pal- 
ace of the Governor-General, a huge, white building 
of classic lines, faintly reminiscent of the White House 
in Washington, is superbly situated in the Botanic 
Gardens, the rear overlooking a charming lotos pond, 
its surface covered with the huge leaves of the water- 
plant known as Victoria Regia, amid which numbers of 
white swans drift gracefully; while the colonnaded 
front commands a magnificent view of a vast deer 
park which reminds one of the stately manor parks of 
England. 

When you arrive at the Hotel Bellevue in Buiten- 
zorg, be sure and ask for one of the "mountain rooms." 
The view which is commanded by their balconies has 
few equals in all the world. Far in the distance rises 
the majestic, cloud-wreathed cone of Salak, its wooded 
slopes wrapped in a cloak of purple-gray. From its 
foot, cutting a way toward Buitenzorg through a sea of 
foliage, is a ribbon of brown — the Tjidani River. Its 
banks, lined by miles of waving palms, are crowded 



THE GARDEN THAT IS JAVA 183 

with the quaint, thatched dwellings of the natives, hun- 
dreds of whom — men, women and children — are bath- 
ing in its water. One of the most curious and amus- 
ing sights in Java is that of the native women bathing 
in the streams. They enter the river wearing their 
sarongs, gradually raise them as they go deeper into 
the stream, slip them over their heads when the water 
has reached their armpits, and, when they have com- 
pleted their ablutions, reverse the process, thus achiev- 
ing the feat of bathing in full view of hundreds of 
spectators without the slightest improper revelation. 
Hawkinson set up his camera on the bank of the 
Tjidani and spent several hundred feet of film in re- 
cording one of these performances. Even the Pennsyl- 
vania State Board of Censors will be unable to find any 
objection to that bathing scene. 

Though the gardens of Buitenzorg are a veritable 
treasure-house for the botanist and the horticulturist — 
for the Dutch are the best gardeners in the world — 
from the standpoint of the casual visitor they cannot 
compare, to my way of thinking, with the Peradenya 
Gardens of Ceylon. It is beyond all doubt, however, 
the finest collection of tropical trees and plants in exist- 
ence. Here, besides full-grown specimens of every 
known tree of the torrid zone, are culture gardens for 
sugar cane, coffee, tea, rubber, ilang-ilang; for all the 
spice, gum, and fruit trees; for bamboo, rattan, and the 
hard woods, such as mahogany and teak — in short, for 
every variety of tree or plant of commercial, ornamen- 
tal, or utilitarian value. There are also gardens for all 



i84 STRANGE TRAILS 

the gorgeous flowers of Java : the f rangipani, the wax- 
white, gold-centered flower of the dead, the red and 
yellow lantanas, the scarlet poinsetta, the crimson bou- 
gainvillea, and others in bewildering variety. There 
are greenhouses to shelter the rarer and more sensitive 
plants — to shelter them not, as in our hothouses, from 
the cold, but, on the contrary, from the heat and the 
withering rays of the sun. Here too is one of the 
finest collections of orchids in existence, tended by an 
ancient Javanese gardener who is as proud of his curi- 
ous blooms as a trainer is of his race horses or a 
collector of his porcelains. As for the palms, I had 
no idea that so many varieties existed until I visited 
Buitenzorg — emperor palms, Areca palms, Banka 
palms, cocoanut palms, fan palms, cabbage palms, sago 
palms, date palms, feather palms, travelers' palms, oil 
palms, Chuson palms, climbing palms over a hundred 
feet long — palms without end. Amen. Small wonder 
that the palm is regarded with affection wherever it can 
be grown, for what other tree can furnish food, shel- 
ter, clothing, timber, fuel, building materials, fiber, 
paper, starch, sugar, oil, wax, dyes and wine? 

But, when all is said and done, nothing in those 
splendid gardens, not the stately avenue of kanari trees 
whose interlacing branches form a nave as awe-inspir- 
ing as that of some great cathedral, not the rare and 
curious orchids which would arouse the envy of a mil- 
lionaire, appealed to me so powerfully as a Httle Gre- 
cian temple of white marble, all but hidden by the en- 
circling shrubbery, which marks the sleeping-place of 



THE GARDEN THAT IS JAVA 185 

Lady Raffles, wife of that Sir Stamford Raffles who 
once was the British lieutenant-governor of Java. It 
pleases me to think that it is toward this little, moss- 
grown temple that the bronze statue of the great em- 
pire-builder, which stands on the Esplanade in Singa- 
pore, is peering with wistful eyes, for on its base he 
carved these lines: 

"Oh thou whom ne'er my constant heart 
One moment hath forgot, 
Tho' fate severe hath bid us part 
Yet still — forget me not." 



Batavia, the capital of the Indies, is built on both 
banks of the Jacatra River, in a swampy and unhealthy 
plain at the head of a capacious bay. Just as New 
York is divided into the boroughs of Manhattan and 
the Bronx, so the metropolis of Netherlands India is 
divided into the districts of Batavia and Weltevreden, 
the suburb of Meester Cornelis corresponding to 
Brooklyn. Batavia is the business quarter of the 
city ; Weltevreden the residential. The former, which 
is built on the edge of the harbor, is very thickly popu- 
lated and, because of its lowness, very unhealthy. Only 
natives, Malays, Chinese and Arabs live here and the 
great European houses which were once the homes of 
the Dutch officials and merchants have either fallen 
into decay or have been converted into warehouses and 
shops. The Europeans now live in Weltevreden, or 
Meester Cornelis, though they have their offices in 
the lower town. Both the upper and lower towns are 



1 86 STRANGE TRAILS 

traversed by the Jacatra — sometimes called the Tjili- 
woeng — from which branch canals that spread through 
the city in all directions, thereby emphasizing its dis- 
tinctly Dutch atmosphere. The streets are for the 
most part straight and regular, being paved, as in the 
mother-country, with cobblestones. Old Batavia con- 
tains very few relics of the early days, but it is quaint 
and delightfully picturesque and its canals, though any- 
thing but desirable from the standpoint of health, add 
much to its individuality and charm. The most charac- 
teristic feature of Batavia, that distinguishes it from 
all other colonial cities of the East, is that in all its con- 
struction, both public and private, permanency seems to 
be the dominant note. The Dutch do not come to Java, 
as the English go to India and the Americans to the 
Philippines, in order to amass fortunes in a few years 
and then go home ; they come with the intention of re- 
maining. When their children grow up they are sent 
back to Holland to be educated, but, once their school- 
ing is completed, they almost invariably return to the 
East and devote their lives to the development of the 
land in which they were born. 

Batavia, which means literally 'Fair meadows,' was 
originally called Jacatra, The Dutch established a 
trading post here in 1610, the land being obtained from 
the natives by a trick similar to that associated by tra- 
dition with the acquisition of the lower end of Man- 
hattan Island by the founders of Nieuw Amsterdam. 
The Javanese, it seems, were reluctant to sell to the 
Dutch a parcel of land sufficiently large for the erec- 



THE GARDEN THAT IS JAVA 187 

tion of a fort and trading station, but after much dis- 
cussion they finally consented to part with as much 
land as could be included within a single bullock's hide, 
which was their way of saying that their land was not 
for sale. This crafty stipulation did not worry the 
equally crafty Dutch, however, for they promptly ob- 
tained the largest hide available, cut it into narrow 
strips, and, placing these end to end, insisted on their 
right to the very considerable parcel of ground thus 
enclosed under the terms of the bargain. 

A relic illustrative of the barbarous punishments 
which were in vogue during the colony's earlier days is 
to be seen by driving a short distance up Jacatra Road, 
in the lower town. Close by the ancient Portuguese 
church you will find a short section of old wall. Atop 
the wall, transfixed by a spear-point, is an object which, 
despite its many coats of whitewash, is still recogniz- 
able as a human skull. Set in the wall is a tablet bear- 
ing this inscription: 

"In detested memory of the traitor, Peter Erberveld, who was 
executed. No one will be permitted to build, lay bricks or 
plant on this spot, either now or in the future. 

Batavia, April 14, 1772." 

Erberveld was a half-caste agitator who had con- 
spired with certain disaffected natives to launch a re- 
volt, massacre all the Dutch in Batavia, and have him- 
self proclaimed king. Fortunately for the Dutch, the 
plot was betrayed through the faithlessness of a native 
girl with whom Erberveld was infatuated. Because 
of the imperative need of safeguarding the little hand- 
ful of white colonists against massacre by the natives, it 



1 88 STRANGE TRAILS 

was decided that the half-caste should be punished in 
a manner which would strike fear to the hearts of the 
Javanese, who have no particular dread of death in its 
ordinary forms. The judges did their best to achieve 
this object, for Erberveld was sentenced to be impaled 
alive, broken on the wheel, his hands and head cut off, 
and his body quartered. Why they omitted hanging 
and burning from the list I can not imagine. The sen- 
tence was carried out — the contemporary accounts 
record that he endured his fate with silent fortitude — 
and his head is on the wall to-day. But I think that, 
were I the Governor-General of the Indies, I should 
have that grisly reminder of the bad old days taken 
down. Many nations have family skeletons but they 
usually prefer to keep them out of sight. 



CHAPTER IX 

puppet rulers and comic opera courts 

Hamangkoe Boewoenoe Senopati Sahadin 
Panoto Gomo Kalif Patelah Kandjeng VII, 
Ruler of the World, Spike of the Universe, and Sultan 
of Djokjakarta, is an old, old man, yet his brisk walk 
and upright carriage betrayed no trace of the worries 
which might be expected to beset one who is burdened 
with the responsibility of supporting three thousand 
wives and concubines. When one achieves a domestic 
establishment of such proportions, however, he doubt- 
less shifts the responsibility for its administration, dis- 
cipline and maintenance to subordinates, just as the 
commander of a division delegates his authority to the 
officers of his staff. The Sultan, who is now in his 
eighty-ninth year, is a worthy emulator of King Solo- 
mon, the lowest estimate which I heard crediting him 
with one hundred and eighty children. These are the 
official ones, as it were. How many unofficial ones he 
has, no one knows but himself. The youngest of his 
children, now five years old, was, I imagine, a good 
deal of a surprise, being sometimes referred to by dis- 
respectful Europeans as "the Joke of Djokjakarta." 

Djokjakarta, or Djokja, as it is commonly called, is 

set in the middle of a broad and fertile plain, at 

189 



190 STRANGE TRAILS 

the foot of the slumbering volcano of Merapi, whose 
occasional awakenings are marked by terrific earth- 
quakes, which shake the city to its foundations and 
usually result in wide-spread destruction and loss of 
life. It is a city of broad, unpaved thoroughfares, 
shaded by rows of majestic waringins, and lined, in 
the European quarter, by handsome one-story houses, 
with white walls, green blinds and Doric porticos. 
There are two hotels in the city, one an excellently kept 
and comfortable establishment, as hotels go in Java; a 
score or so of large and moderately well-stocked Euro- 
pean stores, and many small shops kept by Chinese; an 
imposing bank of stone and concrete; and one of the 
most beautiful race-courses that I have ever seen, the 
spring race meeting at Djokja being one of the most 
brilliant social events in Java. The busiest part of the 
city is the Chinese quarter, for, throughout the Insu- 
linde, commerce, both retail and wholesale, is largely in 
the hands of these sober, shrewd, hard-working yellow 
men, of whom there are more than three hundred 
thousand in Java alone and double that number in the 
archipelago. Beyond the European and Chinese 
quarters, scattered among the palms which form a 
thick fringe about the town, are the kampongs of the 
Javanese themselves — clusters of bamboo-built huts, 
thatched with leaves or grass, encircled by low mud 
walls. Standing well back from the street, and 
separated from it by a splendid sweep of velvety 
lawn, is the Dutch residency, a dignified building whose 
classic lines reminded me of the manor houses built 



COMIC OPERA COURTS 191 

by the Dutch patroons along the Hudson, A few 
hundred yards away stands Fort Vredenburg, a 
moated, bastioned, four-square fortification, garrisoned 
by half a thousand Dutch artillerymen, whose guns 
frown menacingly upon the native town and the palace 
of the Sultan. Though its walls would crumble before 
modern artillery in half an hour, it stands as a visible 
symbol of Dutch authority and as a warning to the dis- 
loyal that that authority is backed up by cannon. 

Between Fort Vredenburg and the Sultan's palace 
stretches the broad aloun-aloun, its sandy, sun-baked 
expanse broken only by a splendid pair of waringin- 
trees, clipped to resemble royal payongs or parasols. 
In the old days those desiring audience with the sove- 
reign were compelled to wait under these trees, fre- 
quently for days and occasionally for weeks, until "the 
Spike of the Universe" graciously condescended to re- 
ceive them. Here also was the place of public execu- 
tion. In the days before the white men came, public 
executions on the aloun-aloun provided pleasurable 
excitement for the inhabitants of Djokjakarta, who 
attended them in great numbers. The method em- 
ployed was characteristic of Java: the condemned 
stood with his forehead against a wall, and the exe- 
cutioner drove the point of a kris between the verte- 
brae at the base of the neck, severing the spinal cord. 
But the gallows and the rope have superseded the wall 
and the kris in Djokjakarta, just as they have super- 
seded the age-old custom of hurling criminals from the 
top of a high tower in Bokhara or of having the brains 



192 STRANGE TRAILS 

of the condemned stamped out by an elephant, a meth- 
od of execution which was long in vogue in Burmah. 

But, though certain peculiarly barbarous customs 
which were practised under native rule have been abol- 
ished by the Dutch, I have no intention of suggesting 
that life in Djokjakarta has become colorless and tame. 
Au contraire! If you will take the trouble to cross the 
aloun-aloun to the gates of the palace, your attention 
will be attracted by a row of iron-barred cages built 
against the kraton wall. Should you be so fortunate as 
to find yourself in Djokjakarta on the eve of a religious 
festival or other holiday, each of these cages will be 
found to contain a full-grown tiger. For tiger-baiting 
remains one of the favorite amusements of the native 
princes. Nowhere else, so far as I am aware, save 
only in East Africa, where the Masai warriors en- 
circle a lion and kill it with their spears, can you 
witness a sport which is its equal for peril and excite- 
ment. 

On the day set for a tiger-baiting the aloun-aloun is 
jammed with spectators, their gorgeous sarongs and 
head-kains of batik forming a sea of color, while from 
a pavilion erected for the purpose the Sultan, sur- 
rounded by his glittering household and a selection 
of his favorite wives, views the dangerous sport in 
safety. In a cleared space before the royal pavilion 
several hundred half-naked Javanese, armed only with 
spears, stand shoulder to shoulder in a great circle, per- 
haps ten-score yards across, their spears pointing in- 
ward so as to form a steel fringe to the human barri- 



COMIC OPERA COURTS 193 

cade. A cage containing a tiger, which has been 
trapped in the jungle for the occasion, is hauled for- 
ward to the circle's edge. At a signal from the Sultan 
the door of the cage is opened and the great striped cat, 
its yellow eyes glaring malevolently, its stiffened tail 
nervously sweeping the ground, slips forth on padded 
feet to crouch defiantly in the center of the extempor- 
ized arena. Occasionally, but very occasionally, the 
beast becomes intimidated at sight of the waiting spear- 
men and the breathless throng beyond them, but 
usually it is only a matter of seconds before things be- 
gin to happen. The long tail abruptly becomes rigid, 
the muscles bunch themselves like coiled springs be- 
neath the tawny skin, the sullen snarling changes to a 
deep-throated roar, and the great beast launches itself 
against the levelled spears. Sometimes it tears its way 
through the ring of flesh and steel, leaving behind it a 
trail of dead or wounded spearmen, and creating con- 
sternation among the spectators, who scatter, panic- 
stricken, in every direction. But more often the spear- 
men drive it back, snarling and bleeding, whereupon, 
bewildered by the multitude of its enemies and mad- 
dened by the pain of its wounds, it hurls itself against 
another segment of the steel-fringed cordon. After 
a time, baffled in its attempts to escape, the tiger re- 
treats to the center of the circle, where it crouches, 
snarling. Then, at another signal from the Sultan, 
the spearmen begin to close in. Smaller and smaller 
grows the circle, closer and closer come the remorse- 



194 STRANGE TRAILS 

less spear-points . . . then a hoarse roar of fury, a 
spring too rapid for the eye to follow, a wild riot of 
brown bodies glistening with sweat . . . spear-hafts 
rising and falling above a sea of turbaned heads as the 
blades are driven home . . . again . . . again . . . 
again . . . yet again . . . into the great black-and- 
yellow carcass, which now lies inanimate upon the sand 
in a rapidly widening pool of crimson. 

Like the palaces of most Asiatic rulers, the kraton of 
the Sultan of Djokjakarta is really a royal city in the 
heart of his capital. It consists of a vast congeries of 
palaces, barracks, stables, pagodas, temples, offices, 
courtyards, corridors, alleys and bazaars, containing 
upward of fifteen thousand inhabitants, the whole 
encircled by a high wall four miles in length. Every- 
thing that the sovereign can require, every necessity 
and luxury of life, every adjunct of pleasure, is 
assembled within the kraton. As the Sultan's world 
is practically bounded by his palace walls, the kraton 
is to all intents and purposes a little kingdom in itself, 
for there dwell within it, besides the officials of the 
household and the women of the harem, soldiers, 
priests, gold and silversmiths, tailors, weavers, makers 
of batik, civil engineers, architects, carpenters, stone- 
masons, manufacturers of musical instruments, stage 
furniture, and puppets, all supported by the court. The 
Sultan rarely leaves the kraton save on occasions of 
ceremony, when he appears in state, a thin, aristocratic- 
looking old man, somewhat taller than the average of 



COMIC OPERA COURTS 195 

his subjects, wrapped in a sarong of cloth-of-gold, hung 
with jewels, shaded by a golden parasol, surrounded by 
an Arabian Nights court, and guarded — curious con- 
trast ! — by a squadron of exceedingly businesslike-look- 
ing Dutch cavalry in slouch hats and green denim uni- 
forms. 

The first impression which one receives upon en- 
tering the inner precincts of the kraton is of tawdri- 
ness and dilapidation. Half-naked soldiers of the , 
royal body-guard, armed with ten-foot pikes and clad 
only in baggy, scarlet breeches and brimless caps of 
black leather, shaped like inverted flower-pots, lounge 
beside the gateway giving access to the Sultan's quar- 
ters or snore blissfully while stretched beneath the 
trees. The "Ruler of the World" receives his 
visitors — who, if they are foreigners, must always be 
accompanied by the Dutch Resident or a member of his 
staff — in the pringitan, or hall of audience, an im- 
mense, marble-floored chamber, supported by many 
marble columns. The pringitan is open on three sides, 
the fourth communicating with the royal apartments 
and the harem, to which Europeans are never ad- 
mitted. At the rear of the pringitan are a number 
of ornate state beds, hung with scarlet and heavily 
gilded, evidently placed there for purposes of dis- 
play, for they showed no evidences of having been 
slept in. Close by is a large glass case containing 
specimens of the taxidermist's art, including a number 
of badly moth-eaten birds of paradise. On the walls I 
noticed a steel-engraving of Napoleon crossing the 



196 STRANGE TRAILS 

Alps, a number of English sporting prints depicting 
hunting and coaching scenes, and three villainous chro- 
mos of Queen Wilhelmina, Prince Henry of the Neth- 
erlands, and the Princess Juliana. 

Thanks to the courtesy of the Resident, who had 
notified the authorities of the royal household of our 
visit in advance, we found that a series of Javanese 
dances had been arranged in our honor. Now Javan- 
ese dancing is about as exciting as German grand 
opera, and, like opera, one has to understand it to 
appreciate it. Personally, I should have preferred to 
wander about the kraton, but court etiquette demanded 
that I should sit upon a hard and exceedingly uncom- 
fortable chair throughout a long and humid morning, 
with the thermometer registering one hundred and 
four degrees in the shade, and watch a number of anae- 
mic and dissipated-looking youths, who composed the 
royal ballet, go through an interminable series of pos- 
turings and gestures to the monotonous music of a 
native orchestra. 

Those who have gained their ideas of Javanese 
dancing from the performances of Ruth St. Denis and 
Florence O'Denishawn have disappointment in store 
for them when they go to Java. To tell the truth I 
found the dancers far less interesting than their audi- 
ence, which consisted of several hundred women of the 
harem, clad in filmy, semi-transparent garments of the 
most beautiful colors, who watched the proceedings 
from the semi-obscurity of the pringitan. I cannot be 
certain, because the light was poor and their faces were 



COMIC OPERA COURTS 197 

in the shadow, but I think that there were several ex- 
tremely good-looking girls among them. There was 
one in particular that I remember — a slender, willowy 
thing with an apricot-colored skin and an oval, piquant 
face framed by masses of blue-black hair. Her orange 
sarong was so tightly wound about her that she might 
as well have been wearing a wet silk bathing-suit, 
so far as concealing her figure was concerned. When- 
ever she caught my eye she smiled mischievously. I 
should have liked to have seen more of her, but an 
unami able-looking sentry armed with a large scimitar 
prevented. 

By extraordinary good fortune we arrived in Djok- 
jakarta on the eve of the celebration of a double royal 
wedding, two of the Sultan's grandsons marrying two 
of his granddaughters. Thanks to the cooperation of 
the Dutch Resident, Hawkinson was enabled to obtain 
a remarkable series of pictures of the highly spectacu- 
lar marriage ceremonies, it being the first time, I be- 
lieve, that a motion-picture camera had been permitted 
within the closely guarded precincts of the kraton. 

The festivities, which occupied several days, con- 
sisted of receptions, fireworks, reviews, games, dances, 
and religious ceremonies, culminating in a most impres- 
sive and colorful pageant, when the two bridegrooms 
proceeded to the palace in state to claim their brides. 
Nowhere outside the pages of The Wizard of Oz could 
one find such amazing and fantastic costumes as those 
worn by the thousands of natives who took part in 
that procession. Every combination of colors was 



198 STRANGE TRAILS 

used, every period of European and Asiatic history was 
represented. Some of the costumes looked as though 
they owed their inspiration to Bakst's designs for the 
Russian ballet — or perhaps Bakst obtained his ideas 
in Djokjakarta; others were strongly reminiscent 
of Louis XIV's era, of the courts of the great Indian 
princes, of the Ziegfeld Follies. 

The procession was led by four peasant women bear- 
ing trays of vegetables and fruits, symbols of fecun- 
dity, I assumed. Behind them, sitting cross-legged in 
glass cages swung from poles, each borne by a score 
of sweating coolies in scarlet liveries, were the four 
chief messengers of the royal harem — former concu- 
bines of the Sultan who had once been noted for their 
influence and beauty. The cages — I can think of no 
better description — were of red lacquer, about four 
feet square, with glass sides, and, so far as I could see, 
entirely air-tight. They looked not unlike large gold- 
fish aquariums. As they were passing us the proces- 
sion halted for a few moments and the panting coo- 
lies lowered their burdens to the ground. Whereupon 
Hawkinson, who is no respecter of persons when the 
business of getting pictures is concerned, set up his 
camera within six feet of one of the cages and pro- 
ceeded to take a "close-up" of the indignant but help- 
less occupant, who, unable to escape or even turn away, 
could only assume an indifference which she was evi- 
dently far from feeling. 

Following the harem attendants marched a company 
of the royal body-guard, in scarlet cutaway coats like 



COMIC OPERA COURTS 199 

those worn by the British grenadiers during the Ameri- 
can Revolution, pipe-clayed cross-belts, white nankeen 
breeches, enormous cavalry boots, extending half-way 
up the thigh, and curious hats of black glazed leather, 
of a shape which was a cross between a fireman's helmet 
and the cap of a Norman man-at-arms. They were 
armed indiscriminately with long pikes and ancient 
flint-locks, and marched to the music of fife and drum. 
The leader of the band danced a sort of shimmy as he 
marched, at the same time tootling on a flute. He 
looked like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Perhaps 
the most curious feature of the procession was pro- 
vided by the clowns, both men and women — an inter- 
esting survival of the court-jesters of the Middle 
Ages — powdered and painted like their fellows of the 
circus, and performing many of their stereotyped an- 
tics. One of them, wearing an enormous pair of black 
goggles, bestrode a sort of hobby-horse, made of 
papier-mache, and, when he saw that Hawkinson was 
taking his picture, cavorted and grimaced, to the huge 
delight of the onlookers. The female clowns, all of 
whom were burdened by excessive avoirdupois, wiggled 
their hips and shoulders as they marched in a sort of 
Oriental shimmy. 

Following a gorgeous cavalcade of mounted princes 
of the blood, in uniforms of all colors, periods, and 
descriptions, their kepis surmounted by towering os- 
trich plumes, came a long procession of the great dig- 
nitaries of the household — the royal betel-box bearer, 
the royal cuspidor-carrier, and others bearing on 



200 STRANGE TRAILS 

scarlet cushions the royal toothpicks, the royal 
toothbrush, the royal toilet set, and the royal mirror, 
all of gold set with jewels. The mothers of the brides, 
painted like courtesans and hung with jewels, were 
borne by in sedan-chairs, in which they sat cross-legged 
on silken cushions. Then, after a dramatic pause, their 
approach heralded by a burst of barbaric music, came 
the brides themselves, each reclining In an enormous 
scarlet litter borne by fifty coolies. Beside them sat at- 
tendants who sprinkled them with perfumes and cooled 
them with fans of peacock-feathers. In accordance with 
an ancient Javanese custom, the faces, necks, arms, and 
breasts of the brides were stained with saffron to a 
brilliant yellow ; their cheeks were as stiff with enamel 
as their garments were with jewels. Immediately be- 
hind the palanquins bearing the brides — one of whom 
looked to be about thirteen, the other a few years 
older — rode the bridegrooms; one, a sullen-looking 
fellow who, I was told, already had five wives and 
plainly showed it, astride a magnificent gray Arab ; the 
other, who was still a boy, on a showy bay stallion, 
both animals being decked with flowers and capari- 
soned in trappings of scarlet leather trimmed with 
silver. The bridegrooms, naked to the waist, were, 
like their brides, dyed a vivid yellow; their sarongs 
were of cloth-of-gold and they were loaded with 
jeweled necklaces, bracelets, and anklets. Royal grooms 
in scarlet liveries led their prancing horses and other 
attendants, walking at their stirrups, bore over their 
heads golden payongs, the Javanese symbol of roy- 



COMIC OPERA COURTS 201 

alty. Following them on foot was a great con- 
course of dignitaries and courtiers, clad in cos- 
tumes of every color and description and walking 
under a forest of gorgeous parasols, the colors of 
which denoted the rank of those they shaded. The 
payongs of the Sultan, the Dutch Resident, and the 
royal princes are of gold, those of the princesses of the 
royal family are yellow, of the great nobles white, of 
the ministers and the higher officials of the country, 
red; of the lesser dignitaries, dark gray, and so on. 
This sea of swaying parasols, the gorgeous costumes 
of the dignitaries, the fantastic uniforms of the sol- 
diery, the richly caparisoned horses, the gilded litters, 
the burnished weapons, the jewels of the women, the 
flaunting banners, and the rainbow-tinted batiks worn 
by the tens of thousands of native spectators combined 
to form a scene bewildering in its variety, dazzling in 
its brilliancy and kaleidoscopic in its coloring. Mr. 
Ziegfeld never produced so fantastic and colorful a 
spectacle. It would have been the envy and the de- 
spair of that prince of showmen, the late Phineas T. 
Barnum. 

A dozen miles or so northwest of Djokjakarta, 
standing in the middle of a fertile plain which 
stretches away to the lower slopes of slumbering 
Merapi, are the ruins of Boro-Boedor, of all the Hindu 
temples of Java the largest and the most magnificent 
and one of the architectural marvels of the world. 
They can be reached from Djokjakarta by motor 



202 STRANGE TRAILS 

in an hour. The road, which skirts the foothills 
of a volcanic mountain range, runs through a number of 
archways roofed with red tiles which in the rainy sea- 
son afford convenient refuges from the sudden tropical 
showers and in the dry season opportunities to escape 
from the blinding glare of the sun. Leaving the main 
highway at Kalangan, a quaint hamlet with a pictur- 
esque and interesting market, we turned into a side 
road and wound for a few miles through cocoanut plan- 
tations, then the road ascended and, rounding the shoul- 
der of a little hill, we saw, through the trees, a squat, 
pyramidal mass of reddish stone, broken, irregular and 
unimposing. It was Tjandi Boro-Boedor (the name 
means "shrine of the many Buddhas") considered by 
many authorities the most interesting Buddhist remains 
in existence. Though in magnitude it cannot compare 
with such great Buddhist monuments as those at Ajunta 
in India, and Angkor in Cambodia, yet in Its beautiful 
symmetry and its wealth of carving it is superior to 
them all. 

Strictly speaking, Boro-Boedor is not a temple but 
a hill, rising about one hundred and fifty feet above 
the plain, encased with terraces constructed of hewn 
lava-blocks and crowded with sculptures, which, if 
placed side by side, would extend for upwards of three 
miles. The lowest terrace now above ground forms 
a square, each side approximately five hundred feet 
long. About fifty feet higher there is another terrace 
of similar shape. Then follow four other terraces of 
more irregular contour, the structure being crowned 



COMIC OPERA COURTS 203 

by a dome or cupola, fifty feet In diameter, surrounded 
by sixteen smaller bell-shaped cupolas, known as 
dagohas. The subjects of the bas-reliefs lining the 
lowest terrace are of the most varied description, 
forming a picture gallery of landscapes, agricultural 
and household episodes and incidents of the chase, 
mingled with mythological and religious scenes. It 
would seem, indeed, as though it had been the archi- 
tect's Intention to gradually wean the pilgrims from 
the physical to the spiritual, for as they began to as- 
cend from stage to stage of the temple-hill they were 
insensibly drawn from material, every-day things to the 
realities of religion, so that by the time the dagoha at 
the top was reached they had passed through a course 
of religious instruction, as it were, and were ready, with 
enlightened eyes, to enter and behold the Image of 
Buddha, symbolically left Imperfect, as beyond the 
power of human art to realize or portray. From base 
to summit the whole hill is really a great picture-bible 
of the Buddhist creed. 

The building of Boro-Boedor was probably begun 
in the ninth century, when King Asoka was distribut- 
ing the supposed remains of Buddha throughout all 
the countries of the East in an endeavor to spread the 
faith. A portion of the remains was brought to Boro- 
Boedor, which had been the center of Buddhist influ- 
ence in Java ever since 603, when the Indian ruler, 
Guzerat, settled in Middle Java with five thousand of 
his followers. In the sixteenth century, when a wave 
of Mohammedanism swept the island from end to 



204 STRANGE TRAILS 

end, the Buddhist temples being destroyed by the fa- 
natic followers of the Prophet and the priests slaugh- 
tered on their altars, the Buddhists, in order to save 
the famous shrine from desecration and destruction, 
buried it under many feet of earth. Thus the great 
monument remained, hidden and almost forgotten, for 
three hundred years, but during the brief period of 
British rule in Java, Sir Stamford Raffles ordered its 
excavation, the work being accomplished in less than 
two months. Since then the Dutch have taken further 
steps to restore and preserve it, though unfortunately 
the stone of which it is built was too soft to withstand 
the wear and tear of centuries, many of the bas-reliefs 
now being almost effaced. It remains, however, one 
of the greatest religious monuments of all time. 

Conditions at Surakarta — usually called Solo for 
short — are the exact counterpart of those in Djokja- 
karta : the same puppet ruler, who is called Susuhunan 
instead of Sultan, the same semi-barbaric court life, 
the same fantastic costumes, a Dutch resident, a Dutch 
fort, and a Dutch garrison. But the kraton of the 
Susuhunan is far better kept than that of his fellow 
ruler at Djokjakarta, and shows more evidences of 
Europeanization. The troopers of the royal body- 
guard are smart, soldierly-looking fellows in well- 
cut uniforms of European pattern, to which a dis- 
tinctly Eastern touch is lent, however, by their steel 
helmets, their brass-embossed leather shields, their 
scimitars, and their shoulder-guards of chain mail. The 



COMIC OPERA COURTS 205 

royal stables, which contain several hundred fine Aus- 
tralian horses and a number of beautiful Sumbawan po- 
nies, together with a score or more gilt carriages of 
state, are as immaculately kept as those of Buckingham 
Palace. In the palace garage I was shown a row of 
powerful Fiats, gleaming with fresh varnish and pol- 
ished brass, and beside them, as among equals, a mem- 
ber of the well-known Ford family of Detroit, proudly 
bearing on its panels the ornate arms of the Susuhunan. 
I felt as though I had encountered an old friend who 
had married into royalty. 

As though we had not seen enough dancing at Djok- 
jakarta, I found that they had arranged another per- 
formance for us in the kraton at Surakarta. This 
time, however, the dancers were girls, most of them 
only ten or twelve years old and none of them more 
than half-way through their teens. They wore sarongs 
of the most exquisite colors — purple, heliotrope, vio- 
let, rose, geranium, cerise, lemon, sky-blue, burnt- 
orange — and they floated over the marble floor of the 
great hall like enormous butterflies. As a special mark 
of the Susuhunan's favor, the performance concluded 
with a spear dance by four princes of the royal house 
— blase, decadent-looking youths, who spend their 
waking hours, so the Dutch oificial who acted as my 
cicerone told me, in dancing, opium-smoking, cock- 
fighting and gambling, virtually their only companions 
being the women of the harem. If the Dutch Govern- 
ment does not actively encourage dissipation and de- 
bauchery among the native princes, neither does it 



2o6 STRANGE TRAILS 

take any steps to discourage it, the idea being, I imag- 
ine, that Holland's administrative problems in the 
Vorstenlanden would be greatly simplified were the 
reigning families to die out. The princes, who were 
armed with javelins and krises, performed for our 
benefit a Terpsichorean version of one of the tales of 
Javanese mythology. The dance was characterized by 
the utmost deliberation of movement, the dancers hold- 
ing certain postures for several seconds at a time, 
reminding me, in their rigid self-consciousness, of the 
"living pictures" which were so popular in America 
twenty years ago. 

All of the dancers, as I have already remarked, were 
of the blood royal and one, I was told, was in the 
direct line of succession. Judging from the vacuity of 
his expression, the Dutch have no reason to anticipate 
any difficulty in maintaining their mastery in Soera- 
karta when he comes to the throne. But the Dutch 
officials take no chances with the intrigue-loving native 
princes ; they keep them under close surveillance at all 
times. It is one of the disadvantages of Christian 
governments ruling peoples of alien race and religion 
that methods of revolt are not always visible to the 
naked eye, and even the Dutch Intelligence Service in 
the Indies, efficient as it is, has no means of knowing 
what is going on in the forbidden quarters of the 
kratons. In Java, as in other Moslem lands, more 
than one bloody uprising has been planned in the safe- 
ty and secrecy of the harem. Potential disloyalty is 
neutralized, therefore, by a discreet display of force. 



COMIC OPERA COURTS 207 

Throughout the performance in the palace a Dutch 
trooper in field gray, bandoliers stuffed with cartridges 
festooned across his chest and a carbine tucked under 
his arm, paced slowly up and down — an ever-present 
symbol of Dutch power — watching the posturing 
princes with a sardonic eye. That Is Holland's way 
of showing that, should disaffection show its head, she 
is ready to deal with it. 



CHAPTER X 

THROUGH THE GOLDEN CHERSONESE TO 
ELEPHANT LAND 

Since the world began the peacock's tall which we 
call the Malay Peninsula has swung down from Siam 
to sweep the Sumatran shore. A peacock's tail not 
merely in configuration but in its gorgeousness of color. 
Green jungle — a bewildering tangle of trees, shrubs, 
bushes, plants, and creepers, hung with ferns and 
mosses, bound together with rattans and trailing vines 
— clothes the mountains and the lowlands, its verdant 
riot checked only by the sea. Penetrating the deepest 
recesses of the jungle a network of little, dusky, wind- 
ing rivers, green-blue because the sky that is reflected 
in them is filtered through the interlacing branches. 
Orchids — death-white, saffron, pink, violet, purple, 
crimson — festooned from the higher boughs like in- 
candescent lights of colored glass. The gilded, cone- 
shaped towers of Buddhist temples rising above steep 
roofs tiled in orange, red, or blue, their eaves hung 
with hundreds of tiny bells which tinkle musically in 
every breeze. The scarlet splotches of spreading fire- 
trees against whitewashed walls. Shaven-headed 
priests in yellow robes offering flowers and food to 
stolid-faced images of brass and clay. Long files of 

208 



THROUGH THE GOLDEN CHERSONESE 209 

elephants, bearing men and merchandise beneath their 
hooded howdahs, rocking and rolling down the dim 
and deep-worn forest trails. Snowy, hump-backed 
bullocks, driven by naked brown men, splashing 
through the shallow water on the rice-fields harnessed 
to ploughs as primeval in design as those our Aryan an- 
cestors used. Bronze-brown women, their lithe figures 
wrapped in gaily colored cottons, busying themselves 
about frail, leaf-thatched dwellings perched high on 
bamboo stilts above the river-banks. And, arching 
over all, a sky as flawlessly blue as the dome of the 
Turquoise Mosque in Samarland. Such is the land 
that the ancients called the Golden Chersonese but 
which is labeled in the geographies of today as Lower 
Siam and the Malay States. 

If you will look at the map you will see that Lower 
Siam extends half-way down the Malay Peninsula, run- 
ning across it from coast to coast and thus forming a 
barrier between British Burmah and British Malaya, 
precisely as German East Africa formerly separated 
the British holdings in the northern and southern por- 
tions of the Dark Continent. And, were I to indulge 
in prophecy, I should say that the day would come 
when the fate of German East Africa will overtake 
Lower Siam. History has shown, again and again, 
that the nation, particularly if it is as small and feeble 
as Siam, which forms a barrier between two portions 
of a powerful and aggressive empire is in anything 
but an enviable position. 

Politically that portion of the Malay Peninsula 



210 STRANGE TRAILS 

which is within the British sphere is divided into three 
sections : the colony of the Straits Settlements, the four 
Federated Malay States, and the five non-federated 
states under British protection. The crown colony of 
the Straits Settlements consists of the twenty-seven- 
mile-long island of Singapore and the much larger 
island of Penang; the territory of Province Wellesley, 
on the mainland opposite Penang; Malacca, a narrow 
coastal strip between Singapore and Penang; and, to 
the north of it, the tiny island and insignificant terri- 
tory known as the Dingdings. By the acquisition of 
these small and scattered but strategically important 
territories, England obtained control of the Straits of 
Malacca, which form the gateway to the China Seas. 
In 1896, as the result of a treaty between the British 
Government and the rajahs of the native states of 
Pcrak, Selangor, Pahang, and Negri Sembilan, these 
four states were brought into a confederation under 
British protection. Though they are still under the 
nominal rule of their own rajahs — now known as sul- 
tans — each has a British adviser attached to his court, 
the Governor of the Straits Settlements being ex 
officio the High Commissioner and administrative head 
of the confederation. The non-federated states con- 
sist of Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan, and Trengganu, the 
rights of suzerainty, protection, administration, and 
control of which were transferred by treaty from Siam 
to Great Britain in 1909, and the Sultanate of Johore, 
which occupies the extreme southern end of the penin- 
sula, opposite Singapore. In the non-federated, as in 



THROUGH THE GOLDEN CHERSONESE 211 

the Federated Malay States, British advisers reside at 
the courts of the native sultans. 

Starting at Johore, which, some Biblical authorities 
assert, is identical with the Land of Ophir, and run- 
ning through the heart of British Malaya from south 
to north, is the Federated Malay States Railway, 
which has recently been linked up with the Siamese 
State Railways, thus making it possible to travel by 
rail from Singapore to Bangkok in about four days. 
Aside from the heat (In the railway carriages the mer- 
cury occasionally climbs to 120), the insects, the dust, 
and the swarms of sweating natives who pile into every 
compartment regardless of the class designated on their 
tickets, the journey is a comfortable one. 

That section of the F. M. S. Railways which tra- 
verses the Sultanate of Johore runs through the great- 
est tiger country in all Asia. The tiger is to Johore 
what the elephant is to Siam and the kangaroo to 
Australia — a sort of national trademark. Even the 
postage stamps bear an engraving of the striped mon- 
arch of the jungle. There is no place in the world, so 
far as I am aware, save only a zoo, of course, where 
one can get a shot at a tiger so quickly and with such 
minimum of effort. In this connection I heard a story 
at the Singapore Club, the truth of which is vouched 
for by those with whom I was having tiffin. Shortly 
before the war, it seems, an American business man 
who had amassed a fortune in the export business, and 
who was noted even in down-town New York as a 
hustler, was returning from a business trip to China. 



212 STRANGE TRAILS 

In the smoking-room of the home ward bound liner, 
over the highballs and cigars, he listened to the stories 
of an Englishman who had been hunting big game In 
Asia. The conversation eventually turned to tigers. 

"Johore's the place for tigers," the Englishman re- 
marked, pouring himself another peg of whiskey. 
"The beggars are as thick as foxes In Leicestershire. 
You're jolly well certain of bagging one the first day 
out." 

"I've always wanted a tiger skin for my smoking 
room," commented the American. "Could buy one at 
a fur shop on the Avenue, of course, but I want one 
that I shot myself. Think I'll run over to Johore while 
we're at Singapore and get one." 

"But I say, my dear fellow," expostulated the Briton, 
"you really can't do that, you know. We only stop at 
Singapore for half a day — get In at daybreak and 
leave again at noon. You can't get a tiger In that 
time." 

"There's no such word as 'can't' In my business. 
Business methods will bring results in tiger shooting 
as quickly as In anything else," retorted the American, 
rising and heading for the wireless room. 

A few hours later the American's representative in 
Singapore, a youngster who had himself been educated 
In the school of American business, received a wireless 
message from the head of his house. It read : "Arriv- 
ing Singapore daybreak Thursday. Leaving noon 
same day. Wish to shoot tiger In Johore. Make 
arrangements." 



THROUGH THE GOLDEN CHERSONESE 213 

Now the representative In Singapore knew perfectly 
well that his promotion, if not his job, depended upon 
his employer getting a tiger. And, as the steamer was 
due in four days, there was no time to spare. From 
the director of the Singapore zoo he purchased for 
considerably above the market price, a decrepit and 
somewhat moth-eaten tiger of advanced years, which 
he had transported across the straits to Johore, whence 
it was conveyed by bullock cart to a spot in the edge 
of the jungle, a dozen miles outside the town, where It 
was turned loose in an enclosure of wire and bamboo 
hastily constructed for the purpose. 

When the steamer bearing the American magnate 
dropped anchor in the harbor, the local representative 
went aboard with the quarantine officer. Ten minutes 
later, thanks to arrangements made In advance, a 
launch was bearing him and his chief to the shore, 
where a motor car was waiting. It is barely a dozen 
miles from the wharf at Singapore to Woodlands, the 
ferry station opposite Johore, and the driver had 
orders to shatter the speed laws. A waiting launch 
streaked across the two miles of channel which sepa- 
rates the Island from the mainland and drew up along- 
side the quay at Johore, where another car was wait- 
ing. The roads are excellent in the sultanate, and 
thirty minutes of fast driving brought the two Ameri- 
cans to the zareba, within which the tiger, guarded by 
natives, was peacefully breakfasting on a goat. 

"He's a real man-eater," whispered the agent, hand- 
ing his employer a loaded express rifle. "We only 



214 STRANGE TRAILS 

located him yesterday. Lured him with a goat, you 
know . . . the smell of blood attracts 'em. You'd 
better put a bullet in him before he sees us. One just 
behind the shoulder will do the business." 

The magnate, trembling with excitement for the first 
time in his busy life, drew bead on the tawny stripe 
behind the tiger's shoulder. There was a shattering 
roar, the great beast pawed convulsively at the air, 
then rolled on its side and lay motionless. 

"Good work," the local man commented approving- 
ly. "It's only an hour and forty minutes since we left 
the boat — a record for tiger shooting, I fancy. We'll 
be back at Raffles' for breakfast by nine o'clock and 
after that I'll show you round the city. Don't worry 
about the skin, sir. The natives'll tend to the skin- 
ning and I'll have it on board before you sail." 

Now — so the story goes — after dinner in the mag- 
nate's New York home he takes his guests into the 
smoking room for cigars and coffee. Spread before 
the fireplace is a great orange and black pelt, a trifle 
faded it is true, but indubitably the skin of a tiger. 

"Yes," the host complacently in reply to his guests' 
admiring comments, "a real man-eater. Shot him my- 
self in the Johore jungle. Easy enough to get a 
tiger if you use American business methods." 



When, upon reaching Singapore, the great seaport 
at the tip of the Malay Peninsula which is the gateway 
to the Malay States and to Siam, I learned that 



THROUGH THE GOLDEN CHERSONESE 215 

small but not uncomfortable steamers sail weekly for 
Bangkok — a four-day voyage if the monsoon is blow- 
ing in the right direction — or that, by crossing the nar- 
row straits on the ferry to Johore, we could reach the 
capital of Siam in about the same time by the Federated 
Malay States and Siamese railways, there seemed no 
valid excuse for keeping the Negros any longer. So, 
bidding good-by to Captain Galvez and his officers, I 
gave orders that the little vessel, on which we had 
cruised upward of six thousand miles, amid some of the 
least-known islands in the world, should return to Ma- 
nila. To leave her was like breaking home ties, and I 
confess that when she steamed slowly out of the har- 
bor, homeward bound, with her Filipino crew lining 
the rail and Captain Galvez waving to us from the 
bridge and the flag at her taffrail dipping in farewell, I 
suddenly felt lonely and deserted. 

When the people whom I met in Singapore learned 
that I was contemplating visiting Siam they attempted 
to dissuade me. I was warned that the train service up 
the peninsula was uncertain, that the steamers up the 
gulf were uncomfortable, that the hotel in Bangkok was 
impossible, the dirt incredible, the heat unendurable, 
the climate unhealthy. And when, desiring to learn 
whether these indictments were true, I attempted to 
obtain reliable information about the country to which 
I was going, I found that none was to be had. The lat- 
est volume on Siam which I could find in Singapore 
bookshops bore an 1886 imprint. The managers of the 
two leading hotels in Singapore knew, or professed to 



2i6 STRANGE TRAILS 

know, nothing about hotel accommodations in Bang- 
kok. Though the administration of the Federal Malay 
States Railways generously offered me the use of a pri- 
vate car over their system, I could obtain no reliable in- 
formation as to what connections I could make at the 
Siamese frontier or when I would reach Bangkok. And 
the only guide book on Siam which I could discover — 
quite an excellent little volume, by the way — was pub- 
lished by the Imperial Japanese Railways ! 

The Siamese are by no means opposed to foreigners 
visiting their country, and they would welcome the 
development of its resources by foreign capital, but, 
owing to the insularity, indifference, timidity and pride 
which are inherent In the Siamese character, they have 
taken no steps to bring their country to the attention 
of the outside world. When one notes the energetic 
advertising campaigns which are being conducted by 
the governments of Japan, China, Java, and even Indo- 
China, where the visitor is confronted at every turn by 
advertisements urging him to "Spend the Week-End 
at Kamakura," "Go to the Great Wall," "Don't 
Miss Boroboedor and Djokjakarta," "Take Advant- 
age of the Special Fares to the Ruins of Angkor," you 
wonder why Siam, which has so much that is novel 
and picturesque to offer, makes no effort to swell its 
revenues by encouraging the tourist Industry. That 
the royal prince who is the Minister of Communica- 
tions recently made a tour of the United States for 
the purpose of studying American railway methods 
suggests, however, that the Land of the White Ele- 



THROUGH THE GOLDEN CHERSONESE 217 

phant is planning to get its share of tourist travel in 
the future. 

I might as well admit frankly that my first impres- 
sions of the Siamese capital were extremely disappoint- 
ing. I didn't expect to be conveyed to my hotel atop a 
white elephant, through streets lined with salaaming 
natives, but neither did I expect to make a wild 
dash through thoroughfares as crowded with traf- 
fic as Fifth Avenue, in a vehicle which unmistakably 
owed its paternity to Mr. Henry Ford, or to be bruskly 
halted at busy street crossings by the upraised hand 
of a helmeted and white-gloved traffic policeman. 
Nor, upon my arrival at the hotel — there is only one 
in Bangkok deserving of the name — did I expect to 
find on the breakfast table a breakfast food manu- 
factured in Battle Creek, or beside my bed an electric 
fan made in New Britain, Connecticut, or behind the 
desk a very wide awake American youth — the son, I 
learned later, of one of the American advisers 
to the Siamese Government — who eagerly inquired 
whether I had brought any American newspapers with 
me and whether I thought the pennant would be won 
by the Giants or the White Sox. 

Bangkok, which, with its suburbs, has a population 
about equal to that of Boston, is built on the banks of 
the country's greatest river, the Menam, some forty 
miles from its mouth. Though the city has a number 
of fine thoroughfares, straight as though laid out with 
a pencil and ruler, between them lie labyrinths of dim 
and evil-smelling bazaars, their narrow, winding, 



2i8 STRANGE TRAILS 

cobble-paved streets lined on either side by stalls 
in which are displayed for sale all the products of the 
country. Because of the Intense heat these stalls 
are open in front, so that the occupants work 
and eat and sleep in full view of everyone who 
passes. The barber shaves the heads of his customers 
while they squat in the edge of the roadway. In the 
licensed gambling houses groups of excited men and 
women crowd about gaming tables presided over 
by greasy, half-naked Chinese croupiers, and, when 
they have squandered their trifling earnings, hasten to 
the nearest pawnshop with any garment or article of 
furniture that is not absolutely indispensable to their 
existence in order to obtain a few more coins to hazard 
and eventually to lose. As a result of this passion for 
gambling, the city is full of pawnshops, some streets 
containing scarcely anything else. At the far end of 
one of the bazaar streets is the largest idol manu- 
factory in Slam, for the temples whose graceful, taper- 
ing towers dot the landscape are filled with images of 
Buddha, in all sizes and of all materials from wood 
to gold set with jewels, most of them donated by the 
devout in order to "make merit" for themselves. As 
all Buddhists wish to accumulate as much merit for 
themselves as possible, in order to be assured at death 
of a through ticket to Nirvana, the idol-making indus- 
try is In a flourishing condition. 

Pushing their way through the crowded thorough- 
fares, their raucous cries rising above the clamor, go 
the ice cream and curry vendors, carrying the para- 



THROUGH THE GOLDEN CHERSONESE 219 

phernalia of their trade slung from bamboo poles 
borne upon the shoulders — perambulating cafeterias 
and soda fountains, as it were. For a satang — a coin 
equivalent to about a quarter of a cent — you can pur- 
chase a bowl of rice, while the expenditure of an- 
other satang will provide you with an assortment of 
savories or relishes, made from elderly meat, decayed 
fish, decomposed prawns and other toothsome ingredi- 
ents, which you heap upon the rice, together with a 
greenish-yellow curry sauce which makes the concoc- 
tion look as though it were suffering from a severe 
attack of jaundice. These relishes are cooked, or 
rather re-warmed, by the simple process of suspending 
them in a sort of sieve in a pot of boiling water, the 
same pot and the same water serving for all customers 
alike. By this arrangement, the man who takes his 
snack at the close of the day has the advantage of 
receiving not merely what he orders; but also flavors 
and even floating remnants from the dishes ordered by 
all those who have preceded him. The ice cream 
vendors drive a roaring trade in a concoction the basis 
of which is finely shaven ice, looking like half-frozen 
and very dirty slush, sweetened with sugar and flav- 
ored, according to the purchaser's taste from an array 
of metal-topped bottles such as barbers use for bay 
rum and hair oil. But, being cold and sweet, "Isa-kee," 
as the Chinese vendors call it, is as popular among the 
lower classes in Siam as ice cream cones are in the 
United States. 

Though the streets of Bangkok are crowded with 



220 STRANGE TRAILS 

vehicles of every description — ramshackle and dis- 
reputable rickshaws, the worst to be found in all the 
East, drawn by sweating coolies; the boxes of wood 
and glass on wheels, called gharries, drawn by de- 
crepit ponies whose harness is pieced out with rope; 
creaking bullock carts driven by Tamils from Southern 
India ; bicycles, ridden by natives whose European hats 
and coats are in striking contrast to their bare legs 
and brilliant panungs; clanging street cars, as crowded 
with humanity as those on Broadway; motors of 
every size and make, from jitneys to Rolls-Royces — 
the bulk of the city's traffic Is borne on the great 
river and the countless canals which empty into it. 
Bangkok has been called, and not ineptly, the Venice 
of the East, for it is covered with a net-work of 
canals, or klongs, which spread out in every direc- 
tion. In sampans, houseboats and other craft, moored 
to the banks of these canals, dwells the major portion 
of the city's inhabitants. The city's water population 
is complete in itself and perfectly independent of its 
neighbors on land, for it has its own shops and dwell- 
ings, its own markets and restaurants, its own theaters, 
and gambling establishments, its own priests and po- 
lice. When you go to Bangkok, I strongly advise you 
to hire a sampan and visit the floating portion of the 
city after nightfall. The houseboats are open at both 
ends and you will see many things that the guidebooks 
fail to mention. 

The Oriental Hotel, the banks, the shipping offices, 
the business houses, and all the legations save only the 



THROUGH THE GOLDEN CHERSONESE 221 

American, are clustered on or near the river in a low- 
lying and unattractive quarter of the town. But fol- 
low the long, dingy, squalid highway known as the 
New Road, a thoroughfare lined with third-rate Chi- 
nese shops and thronged with rickshaws, carriages, 
bicycles, motors, street-cars, and Asiatics of every 
religion and complexion, and you will come at length 
into a portion of the city as different from the mercan- 
tile district as Riverside Drive is from the Bowery. 
Here you will find broad boulevards, shaded by rows 
of splendid tamarinds, lined by charming villas which 
peep coyly from the blazing gardens which surround 
them, and broken at frequent intervals by little parks 
in which are fountains and statuary. There is a great 
common, green with grass during the rainy season, 
known as the Premane Ground, where military reviews 
are held and where the royal cremations take place; 
a favorite spot in the spring for the kite-flying con- 
tests in which Siamese of all classes and all ages par- 
ticipate. Fronting on the Premane Ground are the not 
unimposing stuccoed buildings which house the Min- 
istries of Justice, Agriculture and War. Not far away 
is the new Throne Hall, a huge, ornate structure of 
white marble, in the modern Italian style, its great 
dome faintly reminiscent of the Capitol at Washington. 
From the center of the spacious plaza rises a rather 
fine equestrian statue of the late king, Chulalungkorn, 
and, close by, the really charming Dusit Gardens, beau- 
tifully laid out with walks and lagoons and kiosks and 
a great variety of tropical flowers and shrubs and 



222 STRANGE TRAILS 

trees. But, most characteristic and colorful of all, a 
touch of that Oriental splendor which one looks for in 
Siam, is the congeries of palaces, offices, stables, court- 
yards, gardens, shrines and temples, the whole en- 
circled by a crenelated, white-washed wall, which is the 
official residence of King Rama VI. 

There are said to be nearly four hundred Buddhist 
temples within a two-mile radius of the royal palace, 
of which by far the most interesting and magnificent is 
the famous Wat Phra Keo, or Temple of the Emerald 
Buddha, which is really a royal chapel, being within the 
outer circumference of the palace walls. I doubt if 
any space of similar size in all the world contains such 
a bewildering display of barbaric magnificence, such 
a riot of form and color, as the walled enclosure in 
which this remarkable edifice and its attendant 
structures stand. From the center of the marble- 
paved courtyard rises an enormous, cone-shaped 
prachadee, round at the bottom but tapering to a 
long and slender spire said to be covered with plates 
of gold. It certainly looks like a solid mass of that 
precious metal, and at daybreak and nightfall, when it 
catches the level rays of the sun, it can be seen from 
afar, shining and glittering above the gorgeously 
colored roofs of the temples and the many-tinted 
lesser spires which surround it. Close by the gilded 
prachadee is the bote or chapel used by the king, sur- 
mounted by a similar spire which is overlaid with sap- 
phire-colored plates of glass and porcelain, while a 
little distance away stands the temple itself, its gilded 



THROUGH THE GOLDEN CHERSONESE> 223 

walls set with mosaics of emerald green. Flanking 
the gateways of the temple courtyard are gigantic, 
grotesque figures, fully thirty feet in height, carved 
and colored like the creatures of a nightmare. They 
represent demons and are supposed to guard the ap- 
proaches to the temple, being so placed that they glare 
down ferociously on all who enter the sacred enclosure. 
Other figures in marble, bronze, wood and stone, rep- 
resenting dolphins, storks, cows, camels, monkeys and 
the various fabulous monsters of the Hindu mythol- 
ogy, are scattered in apparent confusion about the 
temple courtyard, producing an effect as bizarre as it 
is bewildering. It is so unreal, so incredibly fantas- 
tic, that I felt that I was looking at the papier-mache 
setting for a motion picture spectacle, such as Griffith 
used to produce, and that the director and the camera- 
man would appear shortly and end the illusion. 

The interior of the main temple is extremely lofty. 
The walls and rafters are of teak and the floor is 
covered with a matting made of silver wire. At the 
far end of this imposing room an enormous, pyram- 
idal shrine of gold rises almost to the roof, its 
dazzling brilliancy somewhat subdued by the semi- 
obscurity of the interior. Wat Phra Keo is unique 
amongst Siamese temples in containing objects of real 
value. Everything is genuine and costly, as becomes 
the gifts of a king, though it must be admitted that 
certain of the royal offerings which are ranged at the 
foot of the shrine, such as jeweled French clocks, figu- 
rines of Sevres and Dresden porcelain, and a large 



224 STRANGE TRAILS 

marble statue of a Roman goddess, are of doubtful 
appropriateness. Ranged on a table at the back of 
the altar are seven images of Buddha in pure gold, the 
right hand of each pointed upward. On the thumb 
and fingers of each hand glitters a king's ransom in 
rings of sapphires, emeralds and rubies, while from the 
center of each palm flashes a rosette of diamonds. 
High up toward the rafters, at the apex of the golden 
pyramid, in a sort of recess toward which the fingers 
of the seven images are pointing, sits an image of 
Buddha, perhaps twelve inches high, said to be cut 
from one enormous emerald — whence the temple's 
name. As a matter of fact, it is made of jade and is of 
incalculable value. Set in its forehead are three eyes, 
each an enormous diamond. The history of this extra- 
ordinary idol is lost in the mists of antiquity. Tradi- 
tion has it that it fell from heaven into one of the 
Laos states, being captured by the Siamese in battle. 
Since then it has been repeatedly lost, captured or 
stolen. Its story, like that of so many famous jewels, 
might fittingly be written in blood. 

It is the custom in Siam for every man to spend a 
portion of his life in a monastery. This rule applies 
to everyone from the poorest peasant upward, the 
king and all the male members of the royal family hav- 
ing at some period worn the yellow robe of a monk. 
This curious custom is, no doubt, an imitation of the 
so-called Act of Renunciation of Gautama, the future 
Buddha, who, at the age of twenty-nine, moved by the 
sufferings of humanity, renounced his rights to his 



THROUGH THE GOLDEN CHERSONESE 225 

father's throne and, abandoning his wife and child, 
devoted the remainder of his life to religion. Just as 
every American boy is expected to go to school, so 
every Siamese youth is expected to enter a monas- 
tery, the stern discipline enforced during this period 
accounting, I have no doubt, for the docility which 
is so noticeable a part of the Siamese character. 
While I was in Siam I was the guest one day of the 
officers' mess of the crack regiment of the household 
cavalry. Though my hosts, with few exceptions, spoke 
fluent English, though several of them had been edu- 
cated at English schools and universities, and though 
the conversation over the mess table was of polo and 
racing and big game shooting and bridge, I learned 
to my astonishment that every one of these debonair 
young officers, with their worldly manners and their 
beautifully cut uniforms, had at one time shaved his 
head, donned the yellow robe of a monk, and begged 
his food from door to door. In view of the univer- 
sality of the custom, it is small wonder that Siam has 
ten thousand monasteries and that 300,000 of its in- 
habitants wear the ocher-colored robe. 

The periods of time which men devote to monastic 
life are not uniform. Some spend between a month 
and a year, others their entire lives. Some enter the 
monastery in their youth, others in middle age or when 
old men. But they all shave their heads and don the 
coarse yellow robe and lead practically the same ex- 
istence. Each morning, carrying their "begging 
bowls," they beg their food at the doors of lay- 



226 STRANGE TRAILS 

men. They come quietly and stand at the door, and, 
accepting the offerings, as quietly depart without ex- 
pressing thanks for what is given them, the idea being 
that they are not begging for their own benefit but in 
order to evoke a spirit of charity in the giver. During 
the dry season it is the custom of the monks to make 
long pilgrimages for the purpose of visiting other mon- 
asteries. Each of these itinerant monks is accompa- 
nied by a youth known as a yom, who carries the simple 
requisites of the journey, the chief of which is a large 
umbrella. Traveling in the interior one frequently 
meets long files of these yellow-clad pilgrims, with 
their attendant yoms, moving in silence along a forest 
trail. When night comes the yom opens the large 
umbrella which he carries, thrusts its long handle into 
the ground, and over it drapes a square of cloth, thus 
extemporizing a sort of tent under which his master 
sleeps. 

To visit Siam without seeing the royal white ele- 
phants would be like visiting Niagara without seeing 
the falls. The elephant stables stand in the heart of 
the palace enclosure, sandwiched in between the palace 
gardens and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Each 
animal — there were only three in the royal stables at 
the time of my visit — has a separate building to itself, 
within which it stands on a sort of dais, one hind leg 
lashed with a rope to a tall, stout post painted scarlet 
and surmounted by a gilded crown. Much as I dis- 
like to shatter cherished illusions, were I to assert that 



THROUGH THE GOLDEN CHERSONESE 227 

the elephants I saw In the royal stables were white, I 
should be convicting myself of color-blindness. The 
best that can be said of two of them, is that they were 
a dirty gray, about the color of a much-used wash-rag. 
The third, had it been a horse, might have been de- 
scribed as a roan, the whole body being a pale reddish- 
brown, with a sprinkling of real white hairs on the 
back. All three animals were, in reality, albinos, hav- 
ing the light-colored iris of the eye, the white toe-nails, 
and the pink skin at the end of the trunk which distin- 
guish the albino everywhere. As a matter of fact, 
"white elephant" Is not a correct translation of the 
Siamese chang penak, which really means "albino ele- 
phant." But most foreigners will continue, I have no 
doubt, to use the term made famous by Barnum. 

Though the albino elephants are never used now- 
adays save on occasions of great ceremony, being 
regarded by the educated Siamese with the same 
amused tolerance with which an Englishman regards 
the great gilt coach, drawn by eight cream-colored 
horses, in which the king goes to open Parliament, the 
ordinary elephant is of enormous economic value to 
the country, being a combination, as it were, of a motor 
truck, a portable derrick, and a freight car. Almost 
anywhere in the back country, where the only roads 
are trails through the jungle, one can see "elephants 
a-pilin' teak in the sludgy, squdgy creeks" or being 
loaded with merchandise for transport into the far 
interior. Indeed, the traveler who wishes to take a 



228 STRANGE TRAILS 

short cut from Siam to Burmah can hire an elephant 
for the journey almost as easily as he could hire a 
motor car In America. It Is a novel means of travel, 
but a little of It goes a long way. A good working 
elephant is a valuable piece of property, being worth 
in the neighborhood of $2,500., but the prospective 
purchaser should remember that the possession of one 
of these giant pachyderms entails considerable over- 
head, or rather, Internal expense. De Wolf Hopper 
was telling only the literal truth when he sang In 
Wang of the tribulations of the peasant who had an 
elephant on his hands : 

"The elephant ate all night, 
The elephant ate all day; 
Do what he would to furnish food, 
The cry was 'Still more hay!' " 

Although, as I have already remarked, sophisticated 
Siamese regard the white elephant with amusement 
tinged with contempt, there is no doubt that among the 
bulk of the people the animals are considered as sac- 
red and are treated with great veneration. Indeed, 
when Slam was forced to cede certain of her eastern 
provinces to France, the treaty contained a clause pro- 
viding that any so-called white elephants which might 
be captured In the ceded territory should be considered 
the property of the King of Siam and delivered to him 
forthwith. A number of years ago, a traveling show 
known as Wilson's English Circus, gave a number of 
exhibitions In Bangkok, which were attended by the 
King, the nobility, and members of the European 




A large herd of wild elephants being driven across a river 




The elephants, herded by domesticated animals, are driven into the corral 
An elephant hunt in Siam 



THROUGH THE GOLDEN CHERSONESE 229 

colony. When the proprietor saw that the popular 
interest in his exhibition was beginning to wear off, he 
distributed broadcast handbills announcing that at the 
next performance "a genuine white elephant" would 
take part in the exhibition. Public curiosity was re- 
awakened and that evening the circus was crowded. 
After the usual bareback riding, in which the Siamese 
were treated to the sight of European women in pink 
tights and tulle skirts pirouetting on the backs of 
cantering Percherons, two clowns burst into the ring. 

"Hey, you!" bawled one of them, "Have you seen 
the white elephant?" 

"Sure, I have," was the response. "The King has 
a stable full of them." 

"Oh, no, he ain't," shouted the first fun-maker. 
"The King ain't got any white elephants. His are all 
gray ones. Pll show you the only genuine white 
elephant in the world," whereupon a small ele- 
phant, as snowy as repeated coats of whitewash could 
make it, ambled into the ring. Though a suppressed 
titter ran through the more sophisticated portion of 
the audience when it was observed that the ridiculous 
looking animal left white marks on everything it 
touched, it was quite apparent that the bulk of the 
spectators resented fun being made of an animal 
which they had been taught to consider sacred, certain 
of the more devout asserting that the sacrilegious per- 
formance would call down the wrath of Buddha. 
Their prophecies proved to be well founded, for the 
"white" elephant died at sea a few days later — as the 



23a STRANGE TRAILS 

result, It was hinted, of poison put in its food by the 
Siamese priests — and Wilson himself, who had been 
suffering from dysentery, died the day after he landed 
at Singapore. 

Being a young nation, so far as the adoption of 
Western methods are concerned, the Siamese are ex- 
tremely sensitive, being almost pathetically eager to 
win the good opinion of the Occidental world. Thus, 
upon Siam's entry into the Great War (perhaps you 
were not aware that the little kingdom equipped and 
sent to France an expeditionary force composed of 
aviation, ambulance and motor units, thus being the 
only independent Asiatic nation whose troops served 
on European soil) the king abolished the white ele- 
phant upon a red ground which from time immemorial 
had been the national standard, substituting for it a 
nondescript affair of colored stripes which at first 
glance appears to be a compromise between the flags 
of China and Montenegro. In doing this, I think that 
the king made a mistake, for he deprived his country 
of a distinctive emblem which was associated with 
Siam the whole world over. 

Fortune was kind to us in the Siamese capital, for 
we reached that city on the eve of a series of royal 
cremations, the attendant ceremonies providing enough 
action and color to satisfy even Hawkinson. It 
should be explained that instead of cremating a body 
immediately, as might be expected in so torrid a cli- 
mate, the remains are placed in a large jar and kept 



THROUGH THE GOLDEN CHERSONESE 231 

in a temple or in the house of the deceased for a period 
determined by the rank of the dead man — the King 
for twelve months and so downward. If the relatives 
are too poor to afford the expenses incident to crema- 
tion, they bury the body, but exhume it for burning 
when their financial condition permits. On the day 
of the cremation, which is usually fixed by an astrolo- 
ger, the remains are transferred from the jar to a 
wooden coffin and carried with much pomp to the 
meru, or place of cremation. When the deceased is 
of royal or noble blood the meru is frequently a mag- 
nificent structure, sometimes costing many thousands 
of dollars, built for the purpose and torn down when 
that purpose has been served. The coffin is placed 
on the pyre, which is lighted by relatives, the occa- 
sion being considered one for rejoicing rather than 
mourning. The royal meru, which had been erected 
in a small park in the outskirts of the capital at a 
cost of one hundred thousand ticals, was a really beau- 
tiful structure of true Siamese architecture, elab- 
orately decorated in scarlet and gold and draped 
with hangings of the same colors. Within the 
meru were three pyres, concealed by gilt screens, on 
which were set the coffins containing the bodies. As 
there were a number of bodies to be burned, the cere- 
monies lasted upward of a week. King Rama going in 
state each afternoon to the meru, where he took his 
place on a throne in an elaborately decorated pavilion. 
After brief ceremonies by a large body of yellow- 
robed Buddhist priests, the King set fire to the end of 



232 STRANGE TRAILS 

a long fuse, which in turn ignited the three pyres 
simultaneously, the ascending clouds of smoke being 
greeted by the roll of drums and the crash of saluting 
cannon. 

When I first suggested to friends in Bangkok that I 
wished to obtain permission for Hawkinson to take 
pictures of the cremation, they told me that it was 
out of the question. 

"But why?" I demanded. "Motion-pictures were 
taken of the funerals of the Pope, and of King Ed- 
ward, and of President Roosevelt, without anyone 
dreaming of protesting, so why should there be any 
objection here? Nothing in the least disrespectful is 
intended." 

"But this is Siam," my friends replied pessimisti- 
cally, "and such things simply aren't done here. No 
one has ever taken a motion-picture of a royal 
cremation." 

"It's never too late to begin," I told them. 

So I took a rickshaw out to the American Legation 
and enlisted the cooperation of our charge d'affaires, 
Mr. Donald Rodgers, the very efficient young diplo- 
matist who was representing American interests in 
Siam pending the arrival of the new minister. 

"I'll do my best to arrange it," Rodgers assured me, 
"but I'm not sanguine about meeting with success. 
The Siamese are fine people, kindly, hospitable and all 
that, but they're as conservative as Bostonians." 

Two days later, however, he sent me a letter, signed 
by the minister of the royal household, authorizing 



THROUGH THE GOLDEN CHERSONESE 233 

Hawkinson to take motion-pictures in the grounds of 
the meru on the following day prior to the cremation. 
I didn't quite like the sound of the last four words, 
"prior to the cremation," but I felt that it was not an 
occasion for quibbling. So the next day, at the ap- 
pointed hour — which was two hours ahead of the time 
set for the cremation — Hawkinson set out for the 
meru, accompanied by his interpreter. He did not 
return until dinner-time. 

"What happened?" I inquired, by way of greeting. 

"What didn't happen?" he retorted. "They turned 
me out just as the cremation was commencing. When 
we reached the meru I was met by an official wearing 
bright-blue pants, who told me that he had been sent 
to assist me in taking the pictures. Well, I got a few 
shots of the meru itself, and of the royal pavilion, and 
of some of the priests and soldiers, but there wasn't 
much doing because there wasn't any action. So I sat 
down to wait for things to happen. Pretty soon the 
troops began to arrive — lancers and a battery of artil- 
lery and a company of the royal body-guard in red 
coats — and after them came the guests : officials and 
dignitaries in all sorts of gorgeous uniforms covered 
with decorations. A few minutes later I heard some- 
one say, 'The King is coming,' so I got the camera 
ready to begin cranking. Just then up comes my 
Siamese chaperone. 'You will have to leave now,' says 
he. 'Leave? What for?' said L 'Because the cre- 
mation is about to begin,' he tells me. 'But that's 
what I've come to take pictures of,' I told him. 'What, 



234 STRANGE TRAILS 

did you think that I attended this party for ?' 'Oh, no,* 
says he, very polite; 'your permission says that you 
can take pictures prior to the cremation.' So they 
showed me the gate." 

"Then you didn't get any pictures?" I queried, deep 
disappointment in my tone. 

"Sure, I got the pictures," was the answer. "Some 
of them, at any rate. That's what I went there for, 
wasn't it?" 

"But how did you work it?" I demanded. 

"Easy," he replied, lighting a cigarette. "I told the 
driver to back his car up against the iron fence which 
encircles the meru; then I set up the camera in the ton- 
neau, so that it was above the heads of the crowd, 
screwed on the six-inch lens which I use for long- 
distance shots, and took the pictures." 

The present ruler of Siam, King Rama VI, is in 
most respects the antithesis of the popular conception 
of an Oriental monarch. Though polygamy has been 
practised among the upper classes in Siam from time 
beyond reckoning, he has neither wife nor concu- 
bines. Instead of riding atop a white elephant, in a 
gilded howdah, or being borne in a palanquin, as is 
always the custom of Oriental rulers in fiction, he shat- 
ters the speed laws in a big red Mercedes. For the 
flaming silks and flashing jewels which the movies have 
educated the American public to believe are habitually 
worn by Eastern potentates. King Rama substitutes the 
uniform of a Siamese general, or, for evening functions 




s S^ 






> 



P< t 



O i! td 
S o <^ 

o .£■§ 



J= O 
3 bo 



THROUGH THE GOLDEN CHERSONESE 235 

at the palace, the dress coat and knee-breeches of 
European courts. He was educated at Oxford and 
Cambridge and later graduated from the Royal Mili- 
tary College at Sandhurst, being commissioned an 
honorary colonel in the British Army. He is the 
founder and chief of an organization patterned after 
the Boy Scouts and known as the Wild Tigers, which 
has hundreds of branches and carries on its rolls the 
name of nearly every youth in the kingdom. Each 
year the organization holds in Bangkok a grand rally, 
when thousands of youngsters, together with many 
adults from all walks of life, for membership in the 
corps is not confined to boys, are reviewed by the 
sovereign, who appears in the gorgeous and original 
uniform, designed by himself, of commander-in-chief 
of the Wild Tigers. 

In one respect, however, King Rama lives up to the 
popular conception of an Oriental ruler : like his father 
before him, he is generous to the point of prodigality. 
This trait was illustrated not long ago, when he sent 
eight thousand pounds to the widow of Mr. Westen- 
gaard, the American who was for many years general 
adviser to the Government of Siam, accompanied by a 
message that it was to be used for the education of her 
son. This recalls a characteristic little anecdote of the 
present ruler's father, the late King Chulalongkorn. 
The early youth of the late king and his brothers was 
spent under the tutelage of an English governess, who 
was affectionately addressed by the younger members 
of the royal family as "Mem." Upon her return to 



236 STRANGE TRAILS 

England she wrote a book entitled An Englishwoman 
at the Siamese Court, in which she depicted her em- 
ployer, King Mongkut, the father of Chulalongkorn, 
in a none too favorable light. Some years later, upon 
the occasion of King Chulalongkorn's visit to England, 
his former governess, now become an old woman, 
called upon him. 

"Mem," he said, in a course of conversation, "how 
could you write such unkind things about my father? 
He was always very good to you." 

"That is true. Majesty," the former governess ad- 
mitted in some confusion, "but the publishers wouldn't 
take the book unless I made it sensational. And I had 
to do it because I was in financial difficulties." 

When she had departed the King turned to one of 
his equerries. "Send the poor old lady a hundred 
pounds," he directed. "She meant no harm and she 
needs the money." 

The chief hobby of the present ruler is, curiously 
enough, amateur dramatics, of which his orthodox and 
conservative ministers do not wholly approve. In ad- 
dition to having translated into Siamese a number of 
Shakesperlan plays, he is the author of several orig- 
inal dramas, which have been produced at the palace 
under his personal direction and in several of which 
he has himself played the leading parts. As a result 
of this predilection for dramatics, he has accumulated 
an extensive theatrical wardrobe, to which he is con- 
stantly adding. When I was in Bangkok I had some 



THROUGH THE GOLDEN CHERSONESE 237 

clothes made by the English tailor who supplies the 
court — an excellent tailor, but expensive. 

"You'll excuse my taking the liberty, I hope, sir," 
he said during the course of a fitting, "but, being as 
you are an American, perhaps you could assist me with 
some Information. I've received a very pressing 
order for a costume such as is worn by the cowboys 
In your country, sir, but, though I've found some pic- 
tures in the English Illustrated weeklies, I don't rightly 
know how to make it. 

"A cowboy's costume?" I exclaimed. "In Slam? 
Who in the name of Heaven wants It?" 

"It's for his Majesty," was the surprising answer. 
"He's written a play in which he takes the part of an 
American cowboy and he's very particular, sir, that 
the costume should be quite correct. Seeing as you 
come from that country, I thought I'd make so bold, 
sir, as to ask If you could give me some suggestions." 

It was quite apparent that he believed that when I 
was at home I customarily went about in chaps, a 
flannel shirt and a sombrero, and, knowing the English 
mind, I realized that nothing was to be gained by at- 
tempting to disillusionize him. 

"Let's see what you've made," I suggested, where- 
upon he produced an outfit which appeared to be a 
compromise between the costume of an Italian bandit, 
the uniform of an Australian soldier, and the regalia 
of a Spanish bull-fighter. Suppressing my inclination 
to give way to laughter, I sketched for the grateful 
tailor the sort of garments to which cowpunchers — 



238 STRANGE TRAILS 

cowpunchers of the screen, at least — are addicted. If 
he followed my directions the King of Siam wore a 
costume which would make William S. Hart green 
with envy. 

King Rama's literary efforts have not been confined 
to playwriting, however, for his book on the wars of 
the Polish Succession is one of the standard authorities 
on the subject. If you go to Siam expecting to see an 
Oriental potentate such as you have read about in 
novels, His Majesty, Rama VI, is bound to prove 
very disappointing. 

But, though the monarch and his court are as up-to- 
the-minute as the Twentieth Century Limited, many 
of the spectacular and colorful ceremonies of old Siam 
are still celebrated with all their ancient pomp and 
magnificence. For example, each year, at the close 
of the rainy season, the King devotes about a fort- 
night to visiting the various temples in and near Bang- 
kok. On these occasions he goes in the royal barge, 
a gorgeously decorated affair, 150 feet in length, look- 
ing not unlike an enormous Venetian gondola, rowed 
by three-score oarsmen in scarlet-and-gold liveries. 
The King, surrounded by a glittering group of court 
officials, sits on a throne at the stern, while attendants 
hold over his head golden umbrellas. From the land- 
ing place to the temple he is borne in a sedan chair 
between rows of prostrate natives who bow their fore- 
heads to the earth in adoration of this short, stout, 
olive-skinned, good-humored looking young man whom 




Once each year the King visits the various temples in and near Bangkok, travelling in the royal 
barge, a gorgeously decorated affair rowed by threescore oarsmen 




The rice-planting ceremony. The l^-^inister of Agriculture ploughs a few furrows in a field outside 

Bangkok, being followed by four young women of the court who scatter rice 

grains on the freshly opened soil 

Colorful ceremonies of old Siam 



THROUGH THE GOLDEN CHERSONESE 239 

nearly ten millions of people implicitly believe to be 
the earthly representative of Buddha. 

Another picturesque observance, the Rice-Planting 
Ceremony, takes place early in May, when the Minis- 
ter of Agriculture, as the deputy of the King, leads a 
long procession of officials and priests to a field in the 
outskirts of the capital, where a pair of white bullocks, 
yoked to a gilded plough, are waiting. Surrounded 
by a throng of functionaries glittering like Christmas 
trees, the Minister ploughs a few furrows in the field, 
being followed by four young women of the court who 
scatter rice grains on the freshly turned soil. Until 
quite recent years, the officials taking part in this pro- 
cession claimed the privilege of appropriating any 
articles which caught their fancy in the shops along 
the route. But this quaint practise is no longer fol- 
lowed. It was not popular with the merchants. The 
Siamese, like all Orientals, place much reliance on 
omens, the position of the lower hem of the panung 
worn by the Minister of Agriculture on this occasion 
indicating, it is confidently believed, the sort of 
weather to be expected during the ensuing year. If 
the edge of the panung comes down to the ankles a dry 
season is anticipated, even a drought, perhaps. If, on 
the contrary, the garment is pulled up to the knees — a 
raining-in-London effect, as it were, — it is freely pre- 
dicted that the country will suffer from floods. But if 
the folds of the silk reach to a point midway between 
knee and ankle, then the farmers look forward to a 



240 STRANGE TRAILS 

moderate rainfall and a prosperous season. It Is as 
though the United States Weather Bureau were to 
base Its forecasts on the height at which the Secretary 
of Agriculture wore his trousers. 

The panung — a strip of silk or cotton about three 
yards long — is the national garment of Slam and 
among the poorer classes constitutes the only article of 
clothing. It is admirably adapted to the climate, being 
easy to wash and easy to put on : all that is necessary 
Is to wind It about the waist, pass the ends between the 
legs, and tuck them into the girdle, thus producing the 
effect of a pair of knickerbockers. As both sexes wear 
the panung, and likewise wear their hair cut short, it is 
somewhat difficult to distinguish between men and 
women. Siamese women keep their hair about four 
or five Inches long and brush It straight back, like 
American college students, without using any comb or 
other ornament, thus giving them a peculiarly boyish 
appearance. In explanation of this fashion of wear- 
ing the hair there Is an Interesting tradition. Once 
upon a time, it seems, a Siamese walled city was 
besieged by Cambodians while the men of the city 
were fighting elsewhere and only women and children 
remained behind. A successful defense was out of the 
question. In this emergency, a woman of militant 
character — the Sylvia Pankhurst of her time — ^pro- 
posed to her terrified sisters that they should cut 
their hair short and appear upon the walls In men's 
clothing on the chance of frightening away the Cam- 
bodians. The ruse succeeded, for, while the Invaders 



THROUGH THE GOLDEN CHERSONESE 241 

were hesitating whether to carry the city by storm, the 
Siamese warriors returned and put the enemy to flight. 
The Siamese prince who told me the story, an officer 
who had spent much of his life in Europe, remarked 
that he understood that American women were also 
cutting off their hair. 

"True enough," I admitted. "In the younger set 
bobbed hair is all the vogue. But they don't cut off 
their hair, as your women did, to frighten away the 
men." 

If you will take down the family atlas and turn to 
the map of Southern Asia you will see that Siam, with 
an area about equivalent to that of Spain, occupies the 
uncomfortable and precarious position of a fat wal- 
nut clinched firmly between the jaws of a nut-cracker, 
the jaws being formed by British Burmah and French 
Indo-China. And for the past thirty years those jaws 
have been slowly but remorselessly closing. Until 
1893 the eastern frontier of Siam was separated from 
the China Sea by the narrow strip of Annam, at one 
point barely thirty miles in width, which was under 
French protection. Its western boundary was the Lu 
Kiang River, which likewise formed the eastern boun- 
dary of the British possessions in Burmah. On the 
south the kingdom reached down to the Grand Lac of 
Cambodia, while on the north its frontiers were coter- 
minous with those of the great, rich Chinese province 
of Yunnan. Now here was a condition of affairs 
which was as annoyfng as it was intolerable to the 



242 STRANGE TRAILS 

land-hungry statesmen of Downing Street and the 
Quai d'Orsay. That a small and defenseless Orien- 
tal nation should be permitted to block the colonial 
expansion of two powerful and acquisitive European 
nations was unthinkable. 

The first step in the spoilation of the helpless little 
kingdom was taken by France in 1893, when, claiming 
that the Mekong — which the French were eager to 
acquire under the impression that it would provide 
them with a trade-route into Southern China — formed 
the true boundary between Siam and Annam, she de- 
manded that the Siamese evacuate the great strip of 
territory to the east of that river. Greatly to the 
delight of the French imperialists, the Siamese refused 
to yield, whereupon, in accordance with the time- 
honored rules of the game of territory grabbing, 
French gunboats were dispatched to make a naval 
demonstration off Bangkok. The forts at the mouth 
of the Menam fired upon the gunboats, whereupon the 
French instituted a blockade of the Siamese capital 
and at the same time enormously increased their de- 
mands. England, which had long professed to be a 
disinterested friend of the Siamese, shrugged her 
shoulders whereupon they yielded to the threat of a 
French invasion and ceded to France the eastern 
marches of the kingdom. Meanwhile the frontier be- 
tween Siam and the new British possessions in Bur- 
mah had been settled amicably, though, as might have 
been expected, in Britain's favor, Siam being shorn of 
a small strip of territory on the northwest. In 1904 



THROUGH THE GOLDEN CHERSONESE 243 

the French again brought pressure to bear, their ter- 
ritorial booty on this occasion amounting to some eight 
thousand square miles, comprising the Luang Prabang 
district lying east of the Mekong and the provinces 
of Malupre and Barsak. Seeing that the process of 
filching territory from the Siamese was as safe and 
easy as taking candy from children, the French tried 
it again in 1907, this time obtaining the provinces of 
Battambang, Sisophon and Siem-Reap, constituting a 
total of some seven thousand square miles, thus bring- 
ing within French territory the whole of the Grand 
Lac and the wonderful ruins of Angkor. In 1909 it 
was England's turn again, but, disdaining the crude 
methods of the French, she informed the Siamese 
Government that she was prepared to relinquish her 
rights to maintain her own courts in Siam, the Siamese 
being expected to show their gratitude for this con- 
cession to their national pride by ceding to England 
the states of Kelantan, Trengganu and Kedah, in the 
Malay Peninsula, with a total area of about fifteen 
thousand square miles. It was a costly transaction for 
the Siamese, but they assented. What else was there 
for them to do? When a burly and determined per- 
son holds you up in a dark alley with a revolver and 
intimates that if you will hand over your pocketbook 
he will refrain from hitting you over the head with a 
billy, there is nothing to do but accede with the best 
grace possible to his demands. In a period of only 
sixteen years, therefore, France and England, by 
methods which, if used in business, would lead to an 



244 STRANGE TRAILS 

investigation by the Grand Jury, succeeded in strip- 
ping Siam of about a third of her territory. The 
history of Siam during that period provides a striking 
illustration of the methods by which European powers 
have obtained their colonial empires. 

It was the Great War which, by diverting the atten- 
tion of France and England, probably saved Siam 
from complete dismemberment. Now, in robbing her, 
they would be robbing an ally and a friend, for in July, 
19 1 7, Siam declared war on the Central Powers, des- 
patched an expeditionary force to France, interned 
every enemy alien in the kingdom and confiscated their 
property, thus ridding France and England of the last 
vestige of Teutonic commercial rivalry in southeast- 
ern Asia. The Siamese, moreover, have had a na- 
tional house-cleaning and have set their country in 
thorough order. Their national finances are now in 
admirable condition; they have accomplished far- 
reaching administrative reforms; they are opening up 
their territory by the construction of railway lines in 
all directions; and they have obtained the practical 
abolition of French and British jurisdiction over cer- 
tain of their domestic affairs, while a treaty which 
provides that the United States shall likewise surren- 
der its extra territorial rights and permit its citizens 
to be tried in Siamese courts has recently been signed. 

The future of Siam should be of interest to Ameri- 
cans if for no other reason than that It is the one 
remaining independent state of tropical Asia. Indeed, 
it is known to its own people as Muang-Thai — the 



THROUGH THE GOLDEN CHERSONESE 245 

"Kingdom of the Free." Whether it will remain so 
only the future can tell. I should be more sanguine 
about the continued independence of the Land of the 
White Elephant, however, were it not for the colonial 
records of its two nearest neighbors, which heretofore, 
in their dealings with Asiatic peoples, have usually 
followed 

"The good old rule . . . the simple plan, 
That they should take who have the power, 
And they should keep who can." 



CHAPTER XI 

TO PNOM-PENH BY THE JUNGLE TRAIL 

Indo-China is a great bay-window bulging from 
the southeastern corner of Asia, its casements opening 
on the China Sea and on the Gulf of Siam. Of all the 
countries of the Farther East it is the most mysterious ; 
of them all it is the least known. Larger than the 
State of Texas, it is a land of vast forests and unex- 
plored jungles in which roam the elephant, the tiger 
and the buffalo; a land of palaces and pagodas and 
gilded temples; of sun-bronzed pioneers and priests in 
yellow robes and bejeweled dancing girls. Lured by 
the tales I had heard of curious places and strange 
peoples to be seen in the interior of the peninsula, I 
refused to content myself with skirting its edges on a 
steamer. Instead, I determined to cross it from coast 
to coast. 

I had looked forward to covering the first stage of 
this journey, the four hundred-odd miles of jungle 
which separate Bangkok, in Siam, from Pnom-Penh, 
the capital of Cambodia, on an elephant. Everyone 
with whom I had discussed the matter in Singapore 
had assured me that this was perfectly feasible. And 
as a means of transportation it appealed to me. It 
seemed to fit into the picture, as a wheel-chair accords 

246 



THE JUNGLE TRAIL 247 

with the spirit of Atlantic City, as a caleche is con- 
gruous to Quebec. To my friends at home I had 
planned to send pictures of myself reclining in a how- 
dah, rajah-like, as my ponderous mount rocked and 
rolled along the jungle trails. To me the idea 
sounded fine. But it was not to be. For, in shaping 
my plans, I had been ignorant of the fact that during 
the dry season, which was then at hand, Asiatic ele- 
phants are seldom worked — that they become morose 
and irritable and are usually kept in idleness until their 
docility returns with the rains. I was greatly dis- 
appointed. 

The overland route thus proving impracticable, so 
far as the first part of the journey was concerned, the 
sea road alone remained. Of vessels plying between 
Bangkok and the ports of French Indo-China there 
were but two — the Bonite, a French packet slightly 
larger than a Hudson River tugboat, which twice 
monthly makes the round trip between the Siamese 
capital and Saigon; and a Danish tramp; the Chutii- 
tutch, an unkempt vagrant of the seas which wanders at 
will along the Gulf Coast, touching at those obscure 
ports where cargo or passengers are likely to be found. 
The Bonite swung at her moorings in the Menam, op- 
posite my hotel windows, so, made cautious by previous 
experiences on other coastwise vessels, I went out in a 
sampan to make a preliminary survey. But I did not 
go aboard. The odors which assailed me as I drew 
near caused me to decide abruptly that I wished to 
make no voyage on her. The Chutututch, I reasoned. 



248 STRANGE TRAILS 

must be better; it certainly could not be worse. And 
when I approached her owners they offered no ob- 
jections to earning a few-score extra ticals by extend- 
ing her itinerary so as to drop me at the tiny Cam- 
bodian port of Kep. The next day, then, saw me on 
the bridge of the Chutututch, smoking for politeness' 
sake one of the genial captain's villainous cigars, as we 
steamed slowly between the palm-fringed, temple- 
dotted banks of the Menam toward the Gulf. 

On many kinds of vessels I have voyaged the Seven 
Seas. I once spent Christmas on a Russian steamer, 
jammed to her guards with lousy pilgrims bound for 
the Holy Land, in a tempest off the Syrian coast. On 
another memorable occasion I skirted the shores of 
Crete on a Greek schooner which was engaged in con- 
veying from Canea to Candia a detachment of British 
recruits much the worse for rum. But that voyage on 
the Chutututch will linger longest in my memory. 
From stem to stern she was packed with yellow, half- 
naked, perspiring humanity — Siamese, Laos, Burmans, 
Annamites, Cambodians, Malays, Chinese — journey- 
ing, God knows why, to ports whose very names I had 
never before heard. They lay so thick beneath the 
awnings that the sailors literally had to walk upon 
them in order to perform their work. From the glassy 
surface of the Gulf the heat rose in waves — blasts from 
an opened furnace door. The flaming ball of molten 
brass that was the sun beat down upon the crowded 
decks until they were as hot to the touch as a railway 
station stove at white heat. The odors of crude, 




Transportation in the Siamese jungle 

Long files of elephants, bearing men and merchandise beneath the hooded howdahs, rocking and 
rolling down the dim and deep-worn jungle trails 



THE JUNGLE TRAIL 249 

sugar, copra, tobacco, engine oil, perspiration and fish 
frying in the galley mingled in a stench that rose to 
heaven. In the sweat-box which had been allotted to 
me, called by courtesy a cabin, a large gray ship's rat 
gnawed industriously at my suit-case in an endeavor 
to ascertain what it contained; insects that shall be 
nameless disported themselves upon the dubious- 
looking blanket which formed the only covering of the 
bed; cockroaches of incredible size used the wash- 
basin as a public swimming-pool. 

The other cabin passengers were all three Anglo- 
Saxons — a young Englishman and an American mis- 
sionary and his wife. These last, I found, were con- 
voying a flock of noisy Siamese youngsters, pupils at 
an American school in Bangkok, to a small bathing 
resort at the mouth of the Menam, where, it was 
alleged, the mercury had been known to drop as low 
as 90 on cold days. Because of its invigorating cli- 
mate it is a favorite hot weather resort for the well- 
to-do Siamese. Here, in a bungalow that had been 
placed at their disposal by the King, the missionary 
and his charges proposed to spend a glorious fortnight 
away from the city's heat. Now do not draw a mental 
picture of a sanctimonious person with a Prince Al- 
bert coat, a white bow tie and a prominent Adam's 
apple. He was not that sort of a missionary at all. 
On the contrary, he was a very human, high-spirited, 
likeable fellow of the type that at home would be a 
Scout Master or in France would have made good as a 
welfare worker with the A. E. F. Once, when a par- 



250 STRANGE TRAILS 

ticularly obstreperous youngster drew an over-draft 
on his stock of patience, he endorsed his disapproval 
with an extremely vigorous "Damn!" I took to him 
from that moment. 

When, their energy temporarily exhausted, his 
charges had fallen asleep upon the deck and pande- 
monium had given place to peace, he told me some- 
thing of his story. For four years he had labored In 
the Vineyard of the Lord in Chile, but, feeling that he 
"was having too good a time," as he expressed it, he 
applied to the Board of Missions for transfer to a 
more strenuous post. He obtained what he asked for, 
with something over for good measure, for he was 
ordered to a post in the northeastern corner of Siam, 
on the Annam frontier. If there is a more remote or 
inaccessible spot on the map it would be hard to find it. 
Here he and his wife spent ten years preaching the 
Word to the "black bellied Laos," as the tattooed 
savages of that region are known. Then he was 
transferred to Bangkok. There are no roads in 
Siam, so he and his wife and their five small children 
made the long journey by river, in a native dugout of 
less than two feet beam, in which they traveled and 
ate and slept for upwards of two weeks. 

I asked him if he wasn't becoming wearied of Bang- 
kok, which, as a place of residence, leaves much to be 
desired. 

"Yes, I've had about enough of it," he admitted. 
"I'm anxious to get away." 



THE JUNGLE TRAIL 251 

"Back to the Big Town?" I suggested. "To God's 
Country?" 

"Oh, no; not back to the States," he hastened to as- 
sure me. "I haven't finished my job out here. I want 
to get back to my people in the interior again." 

Whether you approve of foreign missions or not, it 
is impossible to withhold your respect and admiration 
from such men as that. Though at home they are too 
often the butts of ignorant criticisms and cheap witti- 
cisms, they are carrying civilization, no less than 
Christianity, into the world's dark places. They are 
the real pioneers. You might remember this the next 
time an appeal is made in your church for foreign 
missions. 

The young Englishman was likewise an outpost of 
progress, though in a different fashion. For seven 
years he had worn the uniform of an officer in the 
Royal Navy. At the close of the war, seeing small 
prospect of promotion, he had entered the employ of 
a British company which held a vast timber con- 
cession in the teak forests of northern Siam, far 
up, near the Chinese border. He was, he explained, a 
"girdler," which meant that his duties consisted in 
riding through the forest area allotted to him, selecting 
and girdling those trees which, three years later, would 
be cut down. To girdle a tree, as everyone knows, is 
to kill it, which is what is wanted, there being no mar- 
ket for green teak, which warps. He remained in the 
forest for four weeks at a stretch, he told me, without 
seeing a white man's face, his only companions his 



252 STRANGE TRAILS 

coolies and his Chinese cook. His domain comprised 
a thousand square miles of forest through which he 
moved constantly on horseback, followed by elephants 
bearing his camp equipage and supplies. Once each 
month he spent three days in the village where the com- 
pany maintains its field headquarters. Here he played 
tennis and bridge with other girdlers — young English- 
men like himself who had come in from their respec- 
tive districts to make their monthly reports — and in 
gleaning from the eight-weeks-old newspapers the 
news of that great outside world from which he was" 
a voluntary exile. One would have supposed that, 
after seven years spent in the jovial atmosphere of a 
warship's wardroom, his solitary life in the great for- 
ests would quickly have become intolerable, and I ex- 
pressed myself to this effect. But he said no, that he 
was neither lonely nor unhappy in his new life, and 
that his fellow foresters, all of whom had seen serv- 
ice in the Army, the Navy or the Royal Air Force, 
were equally contented with their lot. I could under- 
stand, though. The wilderness holds no terrors for 
anyone who went through the hell of the Great War. 
We dropped anchor at midnight off Chantaboun, 
where a launch was waiting to take him ashore. He 
was going up-country, he told me, to inspect a timber 
concession recently acquired by the company that em- 
ployed him. Yes, he would be the only white man, but 
he would not be lonely. Besides, he would only be in 
the interior a couple of months, he said. He followed 
the coolies bearing his luggage down the gangway and 



THE JUNGLE TRAIL 253 

dropped lightly into the tossing launch, then looked up 
to wave me a farewell. 

"Good luck," he called cheerily. 

"Good luck to youT^ said L 

That is the worst of this gadding up and down the 
earth — it is always — "How d'ye do?" and "Good- 
by." 

Three days out of Bangkok the anchor of the 
Chutututch rumbled down off Kep, on the coast of 
Cambodia. Kep consists of a ramshackle wooden pier 
that reaches seaward like a lean brown finger, an 
equally decrepit custom house, a tin-roofed bungalow 
which the French Government maintains for the use 
of those fever-stricken officials who need the tonic of 
sea air, a cluster of bamboo huts thatched with nipa — 
nothing more. You will not find the place on any 
map; it is too small. 

It is in the neighborhood of three hundred kilo- 
meters from Kep to Pnom-Penh, the capital of Cam- 
bodia, and for nearly the entire distance the highway 
has been hewn through the most savage jungle you can 
imagine. There was only one motor car in Kep and 
this I hired for the journey. I say hired, but bought 
would be nearer the truth. It was an aged and de- 
crepit Renault, held together with string and wire, and 
suffering so badly from asthma and rheumatism that 
more than once I feared it would die on my hands 
before I reached my destination. It had as nurses 
two Annamites, who took unwarranted liberties with 
the truth by describing themselves as mechaniciens. 



254 STRANGE TRAILS 

Accompanying them were two sullen-faced Chinese. 
All four of them, I found, proposed to accompany me 
to Pnom-Penh. At this I protested vigorously, on the 
ground that, as the lessee of the machine, I had the 
right to choose my traveling companions, but my ob- 
jections were overruled by the Chef des Douanes, the 
only French functionary in Kep, who assured me that 
if the car went the quartette must go, too. One of the 
Annamites, he explained, was the chauffeur, the other 
was the cranker, for in Indo-China automobiles are not 
equipped with self-starters and the chauffeurs firmly 
refuse to crank their own cars. They thus "save their 
face," which is a very important consideration in the 
estimation of Orientals, and they also provide easy 
and pleasant jobs for their friends. It is an idea which 
some of the labor unions in America might adopt to 
advantage. I make no charge for the suggestion. 
The two Chinese, it appeared, were the joint owners 
of the machine, and both insisted on going along be- 
cause neither would trust the other with the hire- 
money. Thus it will be seen, we made quite a cozy 
little party. 

The road to Pnom-Penh, as I have already re- 
marked, leads through a peculiarly lonely and savage 
region. And it is very narrow, bordered on either 
side by walls of almost impenetrable jungle. A place 
better adapted for a hold-up could hardly be devised. 
And of the reputations or antecedents of my four self- 
imposed companions, I knew nothing. Nor was there 
anything in their faces to lend me confidence in the 



THE JUNGLE TRAIL 255 

honesty of their intentions. As we were about to start 
a native gendarme beckoned me to one side. 

"Beaucoup des pirats sur la route, M'sieu," he 
warned me in execrable French. 

"Brigands, you mean?" I asked him. 

"Oui, M'sieu." 

That was reassuring. 

"How about these men?" I inquired, indicating the 
motley crew who were to accompany me. "Are they 
to be trusted?" 

He shrugged his shoulders non-commitally. It was 
evident that he did not hold of them a high opinion. 

Producing my .45 caliber service automatic, I 
slipped a clip into the magazine and ostentatiously laid 
it beside me on the seat. It is the most formidable 
weapon carried by any civilized people. True, the 
German Liiger is larger. . . . 

"Tell them," I said to the policeman, "that this gun 
will shoot through twenty millimeters of pine. Tell 
them that they had better dispose of their property 
and burn a few joss-sticks before they start to argue 
with it. And tell them that, no matter what happens, 
the car is to keep going." 

But I was by no means as confident as I sounded, 
for the road was notoriously unsafe, nor did I put 
much trust in my companions. I confess that I felt 
much happier when that portion of my journey was 
over. 

As the road to Pnom-Penh is quite uninteresting 
— ^just a narrow yellow highway chopped through a 



256 STRANGE TRAILS 

dense tangle of tropic vegetation — suppose I take ad- 
vantage of the opportunity to tell you something of 
this little-known land in which we find ourselves. 

French Indo-China occupies perhaps two-thirds of 
that great bay-window-shaped peninsula which pro- 
trudes from the southeastern corner of Asia. In area 
it is, as I have already remarked, somewhat larger 
than Texas; its population is about equal to that of 
New York and Pennsylvania combined. It consists of 
five states: the colony of Cochin-China, the protecto- 
rates of Cambodia, Annam and Tongking, and the 
unorganized territory of Laos, to which might be 
added the narrow strip of borderland, known as 
Kwang Chau Wan, leased from China. In 1902 the 
capital of French Indo-China was transferred from 
Saigon, in Cochin-China, to Hanoi, in Tongking. 

By far the most interesting of these political divi- 
sions is Cambodia, which, for centuries an independent 
kingdom, was forced in 1862 to accept the protection 
of France. An apple-shaped country, about the size 
of England, with a few score miles of seacoast and 
without railway or regular sea communications, it lies 
tucked away in the heart of the peninsula, its south- 
ern borders marching with those of Cochin-China, its 
frontier on the north co-terminous with that of Siam. 
Though the octogenarian King Sisowath maintains a 
gorgeous court, a stable of elephants, upwards of two- 
hundred dancing-girls, and one of the most ornate 
palaces in Asia, he is permitted only a shadow of 
power, the real ruler of Cambodia being the French 



THE JUNGLE TRAIL 257 

Resident-Superior, who governs the country from the 
great white Residency on the banks of the Mekong. 

I know of no region of like size and so compara- 
tively easy of access (the great liners of the Mess^a- 
geries Maritimes touch at Saigon, whence the Cam- 
bodian capital can be reached by river-steamer in two 
days) which offers so many attractions to the hunter 
of big game. Unlike British East Africa, where, as a 
result of the commercialization of sport, the cost of 
going on safari has steadily mounted until now it is a 
form of recreation to be afforded only by war profi- 
teers, Cambodia remains unexploited and unspoiled. 
It is In many respects the richest, as it is almost the 
last, of the world's great hunting-grounds. It is, in- 
deed, a vast zoological garden, where such formalities 
as hunting licenses are still unknown. In its jungles 
roam elephants, tigers, rhinoceroses, leopards, pan- 
thers, bear, deer, and the savage jungle buffalo, 
known in Malaya as the seladang and in Indo-China 
as the gaur — considered by many hunters the most 
dangerous of all big game. 

Nailed to the wall of the Government rest-house at 
Kep was the skin of a leopard which had been shot 
from the veranda the day before my arrival, while 
raiding the pig-pen. The day that I left Kampot an 
elephant herd, estimated by the native trackers at one 
hundred and twenty head, was reported within seven 
miles of the town. Twice during the journey to Pnom- 
penh I saw tracks of elephant herds on the road — it 
looked as though a fleet of whippet tanks had passed. 



258 STRANGE TRAILS 

Nevertheless, I should have put mental question- 
marks after some of the big game stories I heard while 
I was in Indo-China had I not been convinced of the 
credibility of those who told them. Only a few days 
before our arrival at Saigon, for example, an Amer- 
ican engaged in business in that city set out one morn- 
ing before daybreak, in a small car, for the paddy- 
fields, where there is excellent bird-shooting in the 
early dawn. The car, which, owing to the intense 
heat, had no wind-shield, was driven by the Annamite 
chauffeur, the American, a double-barrel loaded with 
bird-shot across his knees, sitting beside him on the 
front seat. Rounding a turn in the jungle road at 
thirty miles an hour, the twin beams of light from the 
lamps fell on a tiger, which, dazzled and bewildered 
by the on-coming glare, crouched snarling in the mid- 
dle of the highway. There was no time to stop the 
car, and, as the jungle came to the very edge of the 
narrow road, there was n'o way to avoid the animal, 
which, just as the car was upon it, gathered itself and 
sprang. It landed on the hood with all four feet, its 
snarling face so close to the men that they could feel 
its breath. The American, thrusting the muzzle of 
his weapon into the furry neck of the great cat, let 
go with both barrels, blowing away the beast's throat 
and jugular vein and killing it instantly. With the 
aid of his badly frightened driver, he bundled the 
great striped carcass into the tonneau of the car and 
imperturbably continued on his bird-shooting expe- 



THE JUNGLE TRAIL 259 

dition. Some people seem to have a monopoly of 
luck. 

Though Saigon and Pnom-Penh do not possess the 
facilities for equipping shooting expeditions afforded 
by Mombasa or Nairobi, and though in Indo-China 
there are no professional European guides, such as the 
late Major Cunninghame; the elaborate and costly 
outfits customary In East Africa, with their mile-long 
trains of bearers, are as unnecessary as they are un- 
known. The arrangements for a tiger hunt in Indo- 
China are scarcely more elaborate and certainly no 
more expensive, than for a moose hunt in Maine. A 
dependable native shikari who knows the country, a 
cook, half-a-dozen coolies, a sturdy riding-pony, two 
or three pack-animals, a tent and food, that is all you 
need. With such an outfit, particularly in a region so 
thick with game as, say, the Dalat Plateau, in Annam, 
the hunter should get a shot at a tiger before he has 
been forty-eight hours in the bush. In a clearing In a 
jungle known to be frequented by tigers, the carcass 
of a bullock, or, if that is unavailable, of a pig. Is 
fastened securely to a stake and left there until It smells 
to high heaven. When its odor is of sufficient potency 
to reach the nostrils of the tiger, the hunter takes up 
his position In the edge of the clearing, or on a platform 
built In a tree If he believes In Safety First. For inves- 
tigating the kill the tiger usually chooses the dimness 
of the early dawn or the semi-darkness which precedes 
nightfall. With no warning save a faint rustle In the 
undergrowth a lean and tawny form slithers on padded 



26o STRANGE TRAILS 

feet across the open — and the man behind the rifle has 
his chance. I have found, however, that even in tiger 
lands, tigers are by no means as plentiful as one's 
imagination paints them at home. It is easy to be a 
big-game hunter on the hearth-rug. 

Pnom-Penh, the capital of Cambodia, stands on the 
west bank of the mighty Mekong, one hundred and 
seventy miles from the sea. Pnom, meaning "moun- 
tain," refers to the hill, or mound, ninety feet high, 
in the heart of the city; Penh was the name of a cele- 
brated Cambodian queen. Until twenty years ago 
Pnom-Penh was a filthy and unsanitary native town, its 
streets ankle-deep with dust during the dry season and 
ankle-deep with mud during the rains. But with the 
coming of the French the flimsy, vermin-infested 
houses were torn down, the hog-wallows which served 
as thoroughfares were transformed into broad and 
well-paved avenues shaded by double rows of handsome 
trees, and the city was provided with lighting and 
water systems. The old-fashioned open water sewers 
still remain, however, lending to the place, a rich, ripe 
odor. Pnom-Penh possesses a spacious and well ven- 
tilated motion-picture house, where Charlie Chaplin 
— ^known to the French as "Chariot" and Fatty Ar- 
buckle convulse the simple children of the jungle just 
as they convulse more sophisticated assemblages on 
the other side of the globe. 

But all that is most worth seeing in Pnom-Penh is 
cloistered within the mysterious walls of vivid pink 
which surround the Royal Palace. Here is the resi- 



THE JUNGLE TRAIL 261 

dence of His Majesty Prea Bat Samdach Prea Siso- 
wath, King of Cambodia ; here dwell the twelve score 
dancing-girls of the famous royal ballet and the hun- 
dreds of concubines and attendants comprising the 
royal harem ; here are the stables of the royal elephants 
and the sacred zebus; here a congeries of palaces, 
pavilions, throne halls, dance halls, temples, shrines, 
kiosks, monuments, courtyards, and gardens the like 
of which is not to be found outside the covers of The 
Thousand and One Nights. It is an architectural ex- 
travaganza, a bacchanalia of color and design, as fan- 
tastic and unreal as the city of a dream. The steep- 
pitched, curiously shaped roofs are covered with tiles 
of every color — peacock blue, vermilion, turquoise, 
emerald green, burnt orange ; no inch of exposed wood- 
work has escaped the carver's cunning chisel; every- 
where gold has been laid on with a spendthrift hand. 
And in this marvelous setting strut or stroll figures 
that might have stepped straight from the stage of 
Sumurun — fantastically garbed functionaries of the 
Household, shaven-headed priests in yellow robes, 
pompous mandarins in sweeping silken garments, be- 
jeweled and bepainted dancing-girls. It is not real, 
you feel. It is too gorgeous, too bizarre. It is the 
work of stage-carpenters and scene-painters and cos- 
tumers, and you are quite certain that the curtain will 
descend presently and that you will have to put on 
your hat and go home. 

From the center of the great central court rises the 
famous Silver Pagoda. It takes its name from its 



262 STRANGE TRAILS 

floor, thirty-six feet wide and one hundred and twenty 
long, which is covered with gure silver. When the 
sun's rays seep through the interstices of the carv- 
ing it leaps into a brilliancy that is blinding. On the 
high walls of the room are depicted in startling col- 
ors, scenes from the life of Buddha and realistic 
glimpses of hell, for your Cambodian artist is at his 
best in portraying scenes of horror. The mural deco- 
rations of the Silver Pagoda would win the unquali- 
fied approval of an oldtime fire-and-brimstone 
preacher. Rearing itself roofward from the center of 
the room is an enormous pyramidal altar, littered with 
a heterogeneous collection of offerings from the de- 
vout. At its apex is a so-called Emerald Buddha — 
probably, like its fellow in Bangkok, of translucent 
jade — which is the guardian spirit of the place. 
But at one side of the altar stands the chief trea- 
sure of the temple — a great golden Buddha set 
with diamonds. The value of the gold alone is esti- 
mated at not far from three-quarters of a million dol- 
lars; at the value of the jewels one can only guess. 
It was made by the order of King Norodom, the 
brother and predecessor of the present ruler, the whole 
amazing edifice, indeed, being a monument into which 
that monarch poured his wealth and ambition. Ranged 
about the altar are glass cases containing the royal 
treasures — rubies, sapphires, emeralds and diamonds 
of a size and In a profusion which makes it difficult to 
realize that they are genuine. It is a veritable cave of 
Al-ed-Din. The covers of these cases are sealed with 



THE JUNGLE TRAIL 263 

strips of paper bearing the royal q^pher — nothing 
more. They have never been locked nor guarded, yet 
nothing has ever been stolen, for King Sisowath is to 
his subjects something more than a ruler; he is vene- 
rated as the representative of God on earth. For a 
Cambodian to steal from him would be as unthinkable 
a sacrilege as for a Roman Catholic to burglarize the 
apartments of the Pope. And should their religious 
scruples show signs of yielding to temptation, why, 
there are the paintings on the walls to warn them of 
the torments awaiting them in the hereafter. It 
struck me, however, that the Silver Pagoda offers a 
golden, not to say a jeweled opportunity to an enter- 
prising American burglar. 

On the south side of the courtyard containing the 
Silver Pagoda is a relic far more precious in the eyes 
of the natives, however, than all the royal treasures put 
together — a footprint of Buddha. It was left, so the 
priests who guard it night and day reverently explain, 
by the founder of their faith when he paid a flying visit 
to Cambodia. Over the footprint has been erected a 
shrine with a floor of solid gold. Buddha did not 
do as well by Cambodia as by Ceylon, however, for 
whereas at Pnom-Penh he left the imprint of his foot, 
at Kandy he left a tooth. I know, for I have seen it. 

In an adjacent courtyard is the Throne Hall, a fine 
example of Cambodian architecture, the gorgeous 
throne of the monarch standing on a dais in the center 
of a lofty apartment decorated in gold and green. 
Close by is the Salle des Fetes, or Dance Hall, a mod- 



264 STRANGE TRAILS 

ern French structure, where the royal ballet gives its 
performances. Ever since there have been kings in 
Cambodia each monarch has chosen from the daugh- 
ters of the upper classes two hundred and forty show- 
girls and has had them trained for dancing. These 
girls, many of whom are brought to the palace by their 
parents when small children and offered to the King, 
'eventually enter the monarch's harem as concubines. 
Admission to the royal ballet is to a Cambodian 
maiden what a position in the Ziegfeld Follies is to a 
Broadway chorus girl. It is the blue ribbon of female 
pulchritude. Unlike Mr. Ziegfeld's carefully selected 
beauties, however, who frequently find the stage a step- 
ping-stone to independence and a limousine, the Cam- 
bodian show-girl, once she enters the service of the 
King, becomes to all intents and purposes a prisoner. 
And Sisowath, for all his eighty-odd years, is a jealous 
master. Never again can she stroll with her lover in 
the fragrant twilight on the palm-fringed banks of the 
Mekong. Never again can she leave the precincts of 
the palace, save to accompany the King. The bars 
behind which she dwells are of gold, it is true, but they 
are bars just the same. 

When I broached to the French Resident-Superior, 
who is the real ruler of Cambodia, the subject of taking 
motion-pictures within the royal enclosure, he was 
anything but encouraging. 

"I'm afraid it's quite impossible," he told me. "The 
King is at his summer palace at Kampot, where he will 
remain for several weeks. Without his permission 



THE JUNGLE TRAIL 265 

nothing can be done. Moreover, the royal ballet, 
which is the most interesting sight in Cambodia, is 
never under any circumstances permitted to dance dur- 
ing his Majesty's absence." 

"But why not telegraph the King?" I suggested, 
though with waning hope. "Or get him on the tele- 
phone. Tell him how much the pictures would do to 
acquaint the American public with the attractions of 
his country; explain to him that they would bring here 
hundreds of visitors who otherwise would never know 
that there is such a place as Pnom-Penh. More than 
that," I added diplomatically, "they would undoubt- 
edly wake up American capitalists to a realization of 
Cambodia's natural resources. That's what you par- 
ticularly want here, isn't it — foreign capital?" 

That argument seemed to impress the shrewd and 
far-seeing Frenchman. 

"Perhaps something can be done, after all," he told 
me. "I will send for the Minister of the Royal House- 
hold and ask him if he can communicate with the King. 
As soon as I learn something definite, you will hear 
from me." 

The second day following I received a call from the 
chief of the political bureau. 

"Everything has been arranged as you desired," 
was the cheering news with which he greeted me. The 
defile will take place in the grounds of the palace to- 
morrow morning. Already the necessary orders have 
been issued. Thirty elephants with their state hous- 
ings; eighty ceremonial cars drawn by sacred bullocks; 



266 STRANGE TRAILS 

the royal body-guard In full uniform; a delegation of 
mandarins in court-dress; a hundred Buddhist priests 
attached to the royal temple; and, moreover, his 
Majesty has granted special permission — an unheard- 
of thing, let me tell you ! — for the royal ballet to give 
a performance expressly for you to-morrow afternoon 
on the terrace of the throne-hall. It will be a marvel- 
ous spectacle." 

"Bully!" I exclaimed. "Won't you have a drink?" 

"There is one thing I forgot to mention," the offi- 
cial remarked hesitatingly, as he sipped the gin sling 
which is the favorite drink of the tropics. "There 
will be a small charge for expenses — tips, you know, 
for the palace officials." 

"Oh, that's all right," I replied lightly. "How much 
will the tips amount to?" 

"Only about two hundred piastres," was the some- 
what startling answer, for, at the then current rate 
of exchange a piastre was worth about $1.50 gold. 
"The resident will pay half of it, however, as he be- 
lieves that the pictures will prove of great value to the 
country." 

Yet most people think that tipping has reached its 
apogee in the United States ! 

When we entered the gate of the palace the next 
morning, I felt as though I had been translated to the 
days of Haroun-al-Raschid, for the vast courtyard, 
flanked on all sides by marble buildings with tiled roofs 
of cobalt blue, of emerald green, of red, of bril- 
liant yellow, was literally crowded with elephants, bul- 



THE JUNGLE TRAIL 267 

locks, horses, chariots, palanquins, soldiers, priests, 
and officials — all the pomp and panoply of an Asiatic 
court, in short. Though close examination revealed 
the gold as gilt and the jewels as colored glass, the 
general effect was undeniably gorgeous. In spite of the 
brilliance of the scene, Hawkinson was as blase as ever. 
He issued orders to the Minister of the Household as 
though he were directing a Pullman porter. 

"Have those elephants come on In double file," he 
commanded. "Then follow 'em with the bullock-carts 
and the palanquins. I'll shoot the priests and the man- 
darins later." 

"But the priests must be taken at once," the minister 
protested. "They have been waiting a long time, and 
they are already late for the morning service in the 
royal temple." 

"Well, they'll have to wait still longer," was the 
unruffled answer. "Tell them not to get Impatient. 
I'll get round to them as soon as I finish with the ani- 
mals. Think what it will mean to them to have their 
pictures shown on the same screen with Charlie Chap- 
lin and Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford! I 
know lots of people who would be willing to wait a 
year for such a chance." 

Just then there approached across the courtyard a 
trio of youths In white uniforms and gold-laced 
kepis, their breasts ablaze with decorations. At 
sight of them the minister doubled himself in the 
middle like a jack-knife. They were. It appeared, 
some of the royal princes — sons of the King. 



268 STRANGE TRAILS 

There ensued a brief colloquy between the minister 
and the eldest of the princes, the conversation evidently 
relating, as I gathered from the gestures, to the Lovely 
Lady and the Winsome Widow, who at the moment 
were delightedly engaged in feeding candies to a baby 
elephant. 

"His Highness wishes to know," the minister inter- 
preted, "when the ladies of your company are to ap- 
pear. His Highness is a great admirer of American 
actresses; he saw your most famous one. Mademoi- 
selle Theda Bara, at a cinema in Singapore." 

It seemed a thousand pities to destroy the prince's 
delusion. 

"Tell his Highness," I said, "that the ladies will 
not act in this picture. They only play comedy parts." 

The princes received the news with open disappoint- 
ment. If the Lovely Lady and the Winsome Widow 
had only consented to appear on the back of an ele- 
phant, or even in a palanquin, I imagine that they 
might have received a mark of the royal favor in 
the form of a Cambodian decoration. It is a gor- 
geous affair and is called, with great appropriateness, 
the "Order of a Million Elephants and Parasols." 

That afternoon, on the broad marble terrace of the 
throne-hall, which had been covered with a scarlet 
carpet for the occasion, the royal ballet gave a special 
performance for our benefit. The dancers were much 
younger than I had anticipated, ranging in age from 
twelve to fifteen. Dancing has ever been a great insti- 
tution in Cambodia, the dances, which have behind 



^^r/^^-^'^m-^'^^'^. 




THE JUNGLE TRAIL 269 

them traditions of two thousand years, being illus- 
trative of incidents in the poem of the Ramayana and 
adhering faithfully to the classical examples which 
are depicted on the walls of the great temple at 
Angkor, such as the dancing of the goddess Apsaras, 
her gestures, and her dress. The costumes worn by 
the dancing-girls were the most gorgeous that we saw 
in Asia : wonderful creations of cloth-of-gold heavily 
embroidered with jewels. Most of the dancers wore 
towering, pointed head-dresses, similar to the historic 
crowns of the Cambodian kings, though a few of 
them wore masks, one representing the head of a fox, 
another a fish, a third a lion, which could be raised or 
lowered, like the visors of medieval helmets. The 
faces of all of the dancers were so heavily coated with 
powder and enamel that they would have been 
cracked by a smile. It was a performance which 
would have astonished and delighted the most blase 
audience on Broadway, but there in the heart of Cam- 
bodia, with the terrace of a throne-hall for a stage, 
with palaces, temples, and pagodas for a setting, with 
a blazing tropic sun for a spot-light, and with actors 
and audience clad in costumes as curious and colorful 
as those worn at the court of the Queen of Sheba, 
it provided a spectacle which we who were privileged 
to see it will remember always. What a pity that 
Cap'n Bryant was not alive so that I might sit on the 
steps of his Mattapoisett cottage and tell him all 
about it. 



CHAPTER XII 

EXILES OF THE OUTLANDS 

From Pnom-Penh, the capital of Cambodia, to 
Saigon, the capital of Cochin-China, is in the neigh- 
borhood of two hundred miles and two routes are open 
to the traveler. The most comfortable and consider- 
ably the cheapest is by the bi-weekly steamer down the 
Mekong. The alternative route, which is far more 
interesting, consists in descending the river to Banam, 
a village some twenty miles below Pnom-Penh, on the 
opposite bank of the Mekong, where, if a car has 
been arranged for, it is possible to motor across the 
fertile plains of Cochin-China to Saigon in a single 
day. That was the way that we went. 

Though separated only by the Mekong, that mighty 
waterway which, rising in the mountains of Tibet, bi- 
sects the whole peninsula, Cochin-China is as dissimilar 
from Cambodia as the ordered farmlands of Ohio are 
from the Florida Everglades. In Cambodia, stretches 
of sand covered with low, scraggy, discouraged-looking 
scrub alternate with tangled and impenetrable jungles. 
It is a savage, untamed land. Cochin-China, on the 
other hand, is one great sweep of plain, green with 
growing rice and dotted with the bamboo poles of well- 
sweeps, for water can be found everywhere at thirty 

270 



EXILES OF THE OUTLANDS 271 

to forty feet. These striking contrasts in contiguous 
states are due In some measure, no doubt, to differences 
in their soils and climates and to the industry of their 
inhabitants, but more largely, I imagine, to the fact 
that while the Frenchman has been at work in Cochin- 
China for upwards of sixty years, Cambodia is still on 
the frontier of civilization. 

The roads which the French have built in Indo- 
China deserve a paragraph of mention, for, barring 
the rivers and the three short unconnected sections 
of railway on the East coast of the peninsula, they form 
the country's only means of communication. The na- 
tional highways consist of two great systems. The 
Route Colonlale, which was the one I followed, has 
its beginning at Kep, on the Gulf of Slam, runs north- 
eastward through the jungles of Cambodia to Pnom- 
penh, and, recommencing at Banam, swings southward 
across the Cochin-China plain to Saigon. The Route 
Mandarine, beginning at Saigon, hugs the shores of 
the China Sea and, after traversing twelve hundred 
miles of jungle, forest and mountain land in Annam 
and Tongking, comes to an end at Hanoi, the capital of 
Indo-China. The entire length of the Route Manda- 
rine may now be traversed by auto-bus — an excellent 
way to see the country provided you are inured to 
fatigue, do not mind the heat, and are not over-par- 
ticular as to your fellow passengers. A motor car is, 
of course, more comfortable and more expensive; a 
small one can be rented for ninety dollars a day. 

Nowhere has the colonizing white man encountered 



272 STRANGE TRAILS 

greater obstacles than those which have confronted the 
French road-builders in Indo-China ; nowhere has Na- 
ture turned toward him a sterner and more forbidding 
face. But, though their coolies have died by the thou- 
sands from cholera and fever, though their laboriously 
constructed bridges have been swept away in a night by 
rivers swollen from the torrential rains, though the 
fast-growing jungle persistently encroaches on the 
hard-won right-of-way, though they have had to com- 
bat savage beasts and still more savage men, they have 
prosecuted with indomitable courage and tenacity the 
task of building a road "to Tomorrow from the Land 
of Yesterday." 

Saigon, the capital of Cochin-China and the most 
important place in France's Asiatic possessions, is a 
European city set down on the edge of Asia. So far 
as its appearance goes, it might be on the Seine in- 
stead of the Saigon. The original town was burned 
by the French during the fighting by which they ob- 
tained possession of the place and they rebuilt it on 
European lines, with boulevards, shops, cafes, 
a Hotel de Ville, a Theatre Municipal, a Musee, 
a Jardin Botanique, all complete. The general 
plan of the city, with its regular streets and in- 
tersecting boulevards, has evidently been modeled on 
that of the French capital and the Saigonnese proudly 
speak of it as "the Paris of the East." In certain 
respects this is taking a considerable liberty with the 
truth, but they are very lonely and homesick and one 
does not blame them. Most of the streets, which are 



EXILES OF THE OUTLANDS 273 

paved after a fashion, are lined with tamarinds, thus 
providing the shade so imperatively necessary where 
the mercury hovers between 90 and no, winter and 
summer, day and night. At almost every street inter- 
section stands a statue of some one who bore a hand in 
the conquest of the country, from the cassocked figure 
of Pigneau de Behaine, Bishop of Adran, the first 
French missionary to Indo-China, to the effigy of the 
dashing Admiral Rigault de Genouilly, flanked by 
charging marines, who took Saigon for France. 

The most characteristic feature of Saigon is its cafe 
life. During the heat of the day the Europeans keep 
within doors, but toward nightfall they all come out 
and, gathering about the little tables which crowd the 
sidewalks before the cafes in the Boulevard Bonnard 
and the Rue Catinat, they gossip and sip their ab- 
sinthes and smoke numberless cigarettes and mop their 
florid faces and argue noisily and with much gesticula- 
tion over the news in the Courrier de Saigon or the six- 
weeks-old Figaro and Le Temps which arrive fort- 
nightly by the mail-boat from France. They wear 
stiffly starched white linen — though the jackets are all 
too often left unfastened at the neck — and enormous 
mushroom-shaped topees which come down almost to 
their shoulders and are many sizes too large for them, 
and they consume vast quantities of drink, the evening 
usually ending in a series of violent altercations. 
When the disputants take to backing up their argu- 
ments with blows from canes and bottles, the cafe 
proprietor unceremoniously bundles them into pousse- 



274 STRANGE TRAILS 

pousses, as rickshaws are called in Saigon, and sends 
them home. 

Along the Rue Catinat in the evenings saunters a 
picturesque and colorful procession — haggard, sloven- 
ly officers of the troupes coloniales and of the Foreign 
Legion, the rows of parti-colored ribbons on their 
breasts telling of service in little wars iji the world's 
forgotten corners ; dreary, white-faced Government em- 
ployees, their cheeks gaunt from fever, their eyes 
bloodshot from heavy drinking; sun-bronzed, swagger- 
ing, loud-voiced rubber planters in riding breeches and 
double Terais, down from their plantations in the far 
interior for a periodic spree ; women gowned in the 
height of Paris fashion, but with too pink cheeks and 
too red lips and too ready smiles for strangers, equally 
at home on the Bund of Shanghai or the boulevards of 
Paris; shaven-headed Hindu money-lenders from 
British India, the lengths of cotton sheeting which 
form their only garments revealing bodies as hairy and 
repulsive as those of apes ; barefooted Annamite tirail- 
leurs in uniforms of faded khaki, their great round 
hats of woven straw tipped with brass spikes like those 
on German helmets; slender Chinese women, tripping 
by on tiny, thick-soled shoes in pa jama-like coats and 
trousers of clinging, sleazy silk; naked pousse-pousse 
coolies, streaming with sweat, graceful as the bronzes 
in a museum; friars of the religious orders in shovel- 
hats and linen robes ; sailors of the fleet and of the mer- 
chant vessels in the harbor, swaggering along with the 
roll of the sea '-n their gait; Armenian peddlers with 



EXILES OF THE OUTLANDS 275 

piles of rugs and embroideries slung across their shoul- 
ders; Arabs, Indians, Malays, Cambodians, Laos, 
Siamese, Burmese, Chinese, world without end, Amen. 

But, beneath it all, a paralysis is on everything — the 
paralysis of the excessive administration with which 
the French have ruined Indo-China. There are too 
many people in front of the cafes and too few in the 
offices and shops. There is too much drinking and too 
little work. The officials are alternately melancholy 
and overbearing; the natives cringing and sullen. It 
is not a wholesome atmosphere. Corruption, if not 
universal, is appallingly common. Foreigners en- 
gaged in business in Saigon told me that it is necessary 
to "grease the palms" of everyone who holds a Gov- 
ernment position. As a result of this practise, officials 
who are poor men when they arrive in the colony re- 
tire after four or five years' service with comfortable 
fortunes — and France does not pay her public servants 
highly either. And there are other vices. The man- 
ager of a great American corporation doing business 
in Saigon told me that ninety per cent of the city's 
European population are confirmed users of opium. 
And, judging from their unhealthy pallor and lack- 
lustre eyes, I can well believe it. But what else could 
you expect in a country where the drug is sold to 
anyone who has money to pay for it; where it is one of 
the Government's chief sources of revenue? 

On the native population the hand of the French 
lies heavily. In 19 16 there was an attempted jail de- 
livery of political prisoners in Saigon, but the plot was 



276 STRANGE TRAILS 

discovered before it could be put into execution, the 
ring-leaders arrested, and thirty-eight of them con- 
demned to death. They were executed in batches of 
four, kneeling, blind-folded, lashed to stakes. The 
firing party consisted of a platoon of Annamite tirail- 
leurs. Behind them, with machine guns trained, was 
drawn up a battalion of French infantry. The occa- 
sion was celebrated in Saigon as a public holiday, hun- 
dreds of Frenchmen, accompanied by their wives and 
children, driving out to see the sight. The next day 
picture postcards of the execution were hawked about 
the streets. But the authorities in Paris evidently dis- 
approved of the proceeding, for the governor of the 
colony and the commander of the military forces were 
promptly recalled in disgrace. The terrible object- 
lesson doubtless had the desired effect, for the natives 
cringe like whipped dogs when a Frenchman speaks to 
them. But there is that in their manner which bodes 
ill for their masters if a crisis ever arises in Indo- 
China. I should not like to see our own brown wards, 
the Filipinos, look at Americans with the murderous 
hate with which the Annamites regard the French. In 
Africa, by moderation and tolerance and justice, 
France has built up a mighty colonial empire whose in- 
habitants are as loyal and contented as though they 
had been born under the Tricolor. But in far-off Indo- 
China French administration seems, even to as staunch 
a friend of France as myself, to be very far from an 
unqualified success. 

During the ten days that I spent in Saigon I stayed 



EXILES OF THE OUTLANDS 277 

at the Hotel Continental. I shall remember it as the 
place where they charged a dollar and a half for a high- 
ball and fifty cents for a lemonade. It was insufferably 
hot. I can sympathize now with the recalcitrant con- 
vict who is punished by being sent to the sweat-box. 
Battalions of ferocious mosquitoes launched their as- 
saults against my unprotected person with the per- 
sistence that the Germans displayed at Verdun. In 
the next room the tenor of the itinerant grand opera 
company that was giving a series of performances at 
the Theatre Municipal squabbled unceasingly with his 
woman companion. Both were generally much the 
worse for drink. One particularly sultry afternoon, 
when the whole world seemed like the steam room of 
a Turkish bath, their voices rose to an unprecedented 
pitch of violence. Through the thin panels of the 
door came the sound of scuffling feet. Some heavy 
article of furniture went over with a crash. Then 
came the thud of a falling body. 

"Thou accurst one!" I heard the tenor groan. 
Then "Help me! ... I'm dying!" 

"She's done it now!" I exclaimed, springing from 
my bed. 

"Are you stifling with blood?" the woman hissed, 
fierce exultation in her tone. 

"Help me! . . . I'm dying!" moaned the man. 
"And done to death by a woman !" 

It was murder — no doubt about that. Clad only 
in my pajamas though I was, I prepared to throw 
myself against the door. 



278 STRANGE TRAILS 

"Die, thou accurst one I Perish!" shrieked the 
woman. 

I was on the point of bursting into the room when 
I was arrested by the sound of the tenor's voice speak- 
ing in normal tones. There followed a woman's 
laugh. I paused to listen. It was well that I did 40. 
They were rehearsing for the evening's performance 
the murder scene from La To sea! 

On another occasion, long after midnight, I was 
aroused from sleep by a terrific racket which suddenly 
burst forth in the streets below. I heard the crash 
of splintering bottles followed by the steps of the 
native gendarmes beating a hasty retreat. Then, from 
throats that spoke my own tongue, rose the rollicking 
words of a long-familiar chorus : 

"I was drunk last night, 
I was drunk the night before, 
I'll get drunk tomorrow night 
If I never get drunk any more; 
For when I'm drunk 
I'm as happy as can be. 
For I am a member of the Souse Fam-i-lee!" 

Leaning from my casement, I hailed a passing 
Frenchman. 

"Who are they?" I asked him. 

"Les touristes Americains sont arrives, M'sieu," he 
answered dryly. 

By the light of the street-lamps as he turned away 
I could see him shrug his shoulders. 

Thinking it over, it struck me that I had been over- 
harsh in my judgment of the homesick exiles who in 



EXILES OF THE OUTLANDS 279 

this far corner of the earth are clinching the rivets of 
France's colonial empire. 

The next morning I set sail from Saigon for China. 
Leaving the mouth of the river in our wake, we 
rounded the mighty promontory of Cap St. Jacques 
and headed for the open sea. The palm-fringed shore 
line of Cochin-China dropped away; the blue moun- 
tains of Annam turned pale and ghostly in the evening 
mists. A sun-scorched, pestilential land. ... I was 
glad to leave it. But already I am longing to return. 
I want once more to sit at a cafe table beneath the 
awnings of the Rue Catinat, before me a tall glass 
with ice tinkling in it. I want to hear the pousse- 
pousse coolies padding softly by in the gathering twi- 
light. I want to see the little Annamite women in 
their sleazy silken garments and the boisterous, swag- 
gering legionnaires in their white helmets. I want 
to stroll once more beneath the tamarinds beside the 
Mekong, to smell the odors of the hot lands, to hear 
again the throbbing of the tom-toms and the soft 
music of the wind-blown temple bells. For 

"When you've 'eard the East a-callin' 
You won't never 'eed naught else." 



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